Notifications Exploratory Research

Overview

Staying informed is crucial in a fast-paced industry like real estate. The high-level objective of this study is to understand our enterprise users’ exposure to notifications and their behavior around notifications. The business goal is to design a notification system that serves the various needs of real estate agents and local compliance demands. Some information is redacted or altered for confidentiality.

Research Goals

  • Understand our agents’ current workflow when receiving and responding to system notifications

  • Understand our agents’ motivations when customizing their notification settings

  • Evaluate how the current system notification experience is serving the needs of our agents

  • Discover system redesign opportunities to optimize the effectiveness of notifications

Research Methodology

Considerations:

  • Our system notifications co-exist in the same space as notifications from other industry tools and personal interests (i.e. store marketing, social media, etc.).

  • Local compliances, nuances, and practices affect our agents’ notification needs.

  • Every stakeholder on the cross-functional team is new to notifications and no prior research was conducted on this feature.

We separated the project into 2 parts and combined the findings from each part to draw business recommendations. In part 1, we conducted secondary research through literature reviews to understand the framework for notification designs and the general notification experience. The results aligned stakeholders’ understanding of notification designs and determined research priority.

In part 2, we interviewed agents with variations in markets, team sizes, and experience levels to resemble the diverse experience of our enterprise users. We defined the focus of the interview using the findings from the literature review in part 1 and existing notification usage data. The interviews explored the participants’ experience with all notifications, including personal notifications to understand our participants’ experiences holistically.

Key Findings and Impact

Email notifications are more flexible and can better meet the needs of our users. Push notifications supplement email notifications by providing an extra layer of awareness for the users.

  • Impact: Shaped the notification roadmap to prioritize research questions pertaining to email notifications.

There are 2 prominent “personalities” when it comes to staying informed, “seekers” and “receivers”. Some users prefer to seek out information while others prefer to have information delivered. Interestingly, the motivation behind the different styles is the same, users don’t want to miss out on new information.

  • Impact: Increased stakeholder exposure to the different user types and shaped the product specification

Users consider multiple factors when deciphering their next steps for a notification. These variables contribute to how a user responds and at what urgency.

  • Impact: Prioritized further research to understand the variables that influence user behavior to influence the design and implementation of notification setting default and customization.