App Notifications

[joelrendall]

Thinking about whether to prioritize adding in-app notifications as well as email notifications (besides our occasional newsletters).

Some other learning sites/apps will notify you through one or both of these means, sometimes according to your activity on the platform (or lack thereof), as well as when new content is released.

I personality find that there is a fine line between a delightful app notification from a service I like, and it becoming annoying (or ignored and eventually disabled).

What notifications do you actually enjoy receiving from other apps and services? Think long-term, ones you’ve left enabled for months or longer, that you haven’t grown to despise.

If we added notifications, what would you want them to be for? Would they be sent over email, in-app… both?

It will take some effort to get them set up, so we want to make sure they would be something that’s appreciated by members as opposed to being an aggressive marketing tactic like some apps do, (because blah).

All ideas and feedback are appreciated, even just a simple “meh”!

[peterjduffy]

Hi @joelrendall, of course there are lots of possible product development priorities, including notifications. You have probably thought of this already, but how about a voting system whereby people can upvote their preferred product development priorities? Then if you get enough upvotes for any particular feature (eg notifications) then (of course) you’d have a robust way of knowing what people want.

Not sure, but I’d imagine there are a bunch of saas platforms out there that could help. Just an idea hope this helps, peter

Ps I’m personally not a fan of notifications unless the notification is time-critical. Thank you!

[mac.cummings]

Ré Notifications…
It’s a “leave well alone” from me.

[ward.edan]

I think as long as you have the option to turn certain notifications on and off it isn’t too much of an issue. So perhaps if there were notifications for daily reminders to study (or weekly/monthly etc., perhaps that could be toggled) or perhaps notifications for when a new study unit or shorty has been added. On Duolingo for example, I used to use reminders at a certain time every day to make sure I would study, but since then I’ve turned them off as it just became a part of my daily routine. Perhaps the best way to go about it would be to make all of the notifications optional, so you could pick and choose which ones interest you (if any at all)

[melj90]

What ward.edan said…”make all of the notifications optional, so you could pick and choose which ones interest you (if any at all)”

[natalia.koscielska]

Hi! Personally, I like daily reminders and I have them on in the apps I actually like and use daily. Just a simple “Don’t forget to compete your daily session on Practice Portuguese.” kind of a message.

[fitterman]

I like reminders, but only if I have control over them (timing, category, etc.) The one I would most want would be a reminder to use the app each day, and that could be a local reminder rather than requiring you to set up some push notification to do it. I’d like it every day at a time I choose, but I could imagine some subscribers would like to get a reminder only on weekdays, etc. For now I’d suggest doing something that’s simple for you to manage and that users can turn off, or better yet, have to opt into.

[peterjduffy]

My 2 cents - ‘flashcards for verbs’ would be waaay more useful than in-app notifications. Because the existing flashcard feature is terrific, and memorising verb declensions is really tough work.

So for example, it would be really helpful to have a dedicated section for verbs flashcards for the most common irregular verbs, for example in the simple past or the imperfect.

Various members of the PP community (including myself) are using other flashcard applications (eg Quizlet) for verb work but it would be brilliant to do everything inside PP. Just my $.02 and I appreciate you are working as hard as possible.

[joelrendall]

Great point! It sounds like we’re all on the same page that notifications could be useful given the right controls, but there are other areas to focus our efforts. We have plans to bring ability to save phrases from every area of the site to Smart Review, just a matter of time. (We are in the middle of working on adding it for episode Vocabulary / Expressions which should be great, especially for those who aren’t currently working through Units to be able to continue building vocabulary!)

[melj90]

Ooooh flashcards for verbs (those completed in the verbs section of the app) would be fabulous! That would definitely get my vote

[patrick.gott]

Notifications: only for really helpful information (e.g. a unit has been added or updated) and rather in-app than email.
Too many notifications and emails in these days.
Therefore my opinion would be: the less the better but I would like to know if something has changed in the app.