UX CHALLENGE:
Growing a business and managing work is tough.
Every day means staying ahead of deadlines, putting out bushfires and answering urgent requests. And all the while still managing to getting your actual, deep-focus work done.
Just as soon as you get down to focus work, some urgent notification will pull you away and into some other task. By the end of the day it often feels like you achieved nothing.
But its never as easy as just turning off notifications or simply ignoring them.
Often a notification can be really important; a big new million dollar sales lead or a co-worker hitting up a problem that threatens to derail your entire project.
So how do you give your user the confidence they are across everything important, without constantly interrupting their workflow?
SOLUTION:
Notifications (alerts) are located into a collapsible, side panel on the browser. A notification is triggered according to a set of rules, then validated to ensure priority and timeliness. For example - here is a new support request, from your priority customer, so it must be urgent!
Every notification type is fully designed to allow instant comprehension from just a quick glance.
When the user is focussed on other work, the panel is collapsed. A new inbound notification will flash a subtle beacon on that item. If the notification is validated as urgent, the same notification is mirrored across to other channels including mobile devices, email and slack channels.
This keeps the user focused on their current task, and if not urgent, lets' them confidently finish that work.
If the user has left that same panel expanded, then a new notification shows a more obvious animation to indicate arrival. The user can then choose to snooze that notification until later, start a discussion about it, or customize it to make future notifications more relevant.
UX OUTCOMES:
☻ You stay in control over your own focus and work. You decide how, when, where to receive notifications.
☻ Immediate confidence that you will never miss something important again.
☻ A micro-glance is all that is required to decide whether a notification requires further attention.
☻ Save time and immediately start working on an issue from within the notification itself.
WHERE TO FIND IT:
Notification management is a key feature in the upcoming WORKetc CRM business management platform release.
