What’s the difference between an alert and a notification?

What’s the difference between an alert and a notification?

Alerts and notifications are used in many mobile and web apps, but the terminology can be tricky.  Over the years I’ve found that working on products which use both can sometimes lead to confusion for stakeholders, development teams, and even end users.  When you’re designing a new product, understanding the nuanced differences can help you to determine which one is right for you.

Alerts

An alert alerts the user that something has happened, and they should take action on it. Alerts happen in the context of the user’s current task.

One of the most common places that I see alerts is on monitoring dashboards.  Imagine a scenario where you’re looking at a screen with many different data points represented. Suddenly, one area of the screen turns red or a warning icon appears.  You’ve just gotten an alert.

Alerts typically happen within the context of a user’s immediate activity: what they’re doing right now.  Often, they’re triggered when a user takes an action – or in the case of monitoring dashboards, they could be triggered by data input.  Alerts point the user directly to where the problem is and say, “hey, look over here!”

Alerts may behave differently in different scenarios. For example, a low impact alert may disappear after a certain time period.  A high impact alert may require acknowledgement by the user.  Some types of alerts may have different colors or icons to show different severity levels.  Other types can be closed by users. 

Some additional examples of alerts may be: 

  • A user entered incorrect information into a field, and is notified on screen that they need to make a change
  • A banner lets the user know that WiFi is down and the application can’t save data
  • A user assigned something to another user, and an on-screen validation message appears
  • A modal pops up letting a user know that a problem with the system prevented data from being processed
  • On-screen alert that the username or password entered are incorrect

Notifications

A notification notifies the user that something has happened, and usually gives information about what happened. It may not happen in the context of the user’s current task.

You’re probably familiar with notifications – I bet you get them all the time.  Notifications let users know that something has happened, but not necessarily within the context of what the user is doing.  If you’re at the library and your phone buzzes to let you know that someone liked your latest Instagram post, you’ve just gotten a notification.

There are a lot of different ways that notifications can happen.  Here are a few examples: 

  • You’re at the gym.  A push notification in the status bar of your phone shows you that someone liked your Facebook post
  • You’re writing a blog post.  An email from LinkedIn lets you know that someone wants to connect with you
  • You’re browsing Twitter.  A text message from your favorite restaurant lets you know that your take out order is ready
  • You’re writing an email.  A notification on your MacBook lets you know that someone has messaged you in Slack

As you can see, a key differentiator between alerts and notifications is that notifications happen when you’re not necessarily actively using the app. 

Using alerts & notifications together

Here’s where it gets tricky!  Alerts and notifications can be used independently or together.  In the examples above, I’ve shown you how alerts and notifications can stand alone.  But sometimes, an alert can trigger a notification to the user.

The SoundSafe app designed by LunarLab uses alerts and notifications together.  This apps lets users know about sounds in their environment (which helps hard of hearing and deaf users to interact with the world more comfortably).  

Users can determine which sounds should trigger an alert, which will appear on screen when the user has the app open.  This could be for any type of sound: from critically important sounds like a smoke alarm, to the microwave beeping. 

Sometimes, a user may be doing another activity outside the app, or the alert is such a high priority that it requires an external notification to let the user know something is happening.  In those cases, the user can choose get a notification when something is serious. 

In the image below, the screen on the left shows an alert that the user might see right within the app letting them know about a carbon monoxide detector going off. The screen on the right shows what happens if the user is not using their phone: a notification appears on the lock screen letting the user know about the problem (this is accompanied by a vibration on the phone). 

Screenshots of the SoundSafe App showing alert and notification

Which one do I need in my app?

As with most things related to product design and strategy: it depends. 

Are your users frequently in the app making changes, and need to know about certain things immediately?  Is it form validation really important to you?  Do you want to prevent users from moving to another screen before they correct some data input or action?  Do you want to monitor for data input coming from outside of the app?  Do you have different severity levels for different events?  If this sounds like your app, alerts might be right for you. 

On the other hand… do your users need to know about events even if they’re not in the app?  Do events happen often outside of times when users are in the app?  Do you have emergency contacts that need to be notified, who might not even use the app? Do you have low-impact events that you want to tell users about, but don’t require immediate action?  If this sounds like you, then notifications might be the best route. 

If you’ve got an app idea and want to chat about whether alerts or notifications (or a combination) are the right choice for you, give us a shout!  We’d love to help you get started.

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