Driven by notifications – exploring the effects of badge notifications on user experience
Open accessAbstract
Notification badges are an unexplored category of visual feedback to which we are continuously exposed. This study aims to deepen knowledge on the topic by measuring the behavioral effects of notification badges on a large sample of smartphone users. More precisely, the goal of the study is to observe if the presence of notification badges increases the frequency of clicks on apps. More than 1000 participants were involved in a remote between-subjects experiment, allocated into fifteen equinumerous groups of comparison. Each participant was presented with a smartphone screen displaying fifteen app icons and just one badge notification. Participants were asked to perform a remote user test called First Impression Click Test: a methodology that indicates where they would click first to accomplish a given task (i.e., Where would you click first on this screen?). Our results show a large increase in the number of clicks on apps with notification badges compared to those without notification badges and suggest the important ability of these small affordances to attract attention and stimulate action. Based on the evidence provided, our findings have practical implications for user experience design.
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Red notification badges normally evoke a sense of urgency to act upon the notification.
“Moreover, grayscaling affects the color of noti fi cation badges (i.e., the red circle on the upper right corner of an app icon displaying the number of unread noti fi cations), of which the red color normally evokes a sense of urgency to act upon the noti fi cation (Bartoli & Benedetto, 2022; Kozyreva et al., 2020).”
From Is life brighter when your phone is not? The efficacy of a grayscale smartphone intervention addressing digital well-being (2024) · cites this paper as Bartoli & Benedetto, 2022
The Introduction describes notification badges as red circles and says they can trigger a sense of urgency and act as calls to action. The Discussion attributes urgency to the badges’ implicit meaning, while linking color to visual salience; it does not establish that the red color itself evokes urgency. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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"A pace not dictated by electrons"
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“Several works have focused on the effects of desktop [7, 8] and mobile notifications [9–17].”
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Dekker, C. A., & Baumgartner, S. E. (2024) · Mobile Media & Communication · doi:10.1177/20501579231212062 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
- Authors
- Bartoli, N., & Benedetto, S.
- Corresponding author
- Benedetto, Simone
- ORCID
- Benedetto, Simone
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2022-06-30
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- e0270888
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9246170
- OpenAlex
- W4283729926
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3
- FWCI
- 1.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Personal Information Management and User Behavior
- Keywords
- visual feedback, smartphone user experience, affordances, remote user testing
- MeSH terms
- Smartphone, Humans, Motivation, Mobile Applications
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