As already presented the idea of creating an applications marketplace fosters the creation of an ecosystem of applications around the Waternomics information platform. The approach as already explained allows applications to share some common datasets in order to avoid duplication, redundancy and finally creating multiple stand-alone applications. The user management structure is an example of how WApP shares common information with applications in order to facilitate operation under the same environment by providing users with a unified and more pleasurable experience avoiding multiple accounts creation etc.
Notifications are another shared feature between applications. A key element in our discussions with users during the user tests was that users needed to be able to see notifications from all kinds of applications at any time (Acharya, 2016; Przybylski et. al. 2013). Notifications therefore needed to be a consistent feature across all applications in the platform. For example, if a user is using an application to read articles related to water conservation and a leak is spotted in a part of the network he needs to be notified immediately and access that notification as soon as possible. That is why the platform on its top main menu that stays there for most of the applications displays an icon and a respective menu to check notification. That way if the user is in the platform and uses any application he can receive and access notifications from all other applications immediately. Moreover, when the user is not in the platform there are additional mechanisms employed such as emails and SMSs based on the criticality of the notification that help reaching the user through other channels of communication.
In order for any application to generate and manage notifications, an API has been developed to allow such functionality. However, notifications in Waternomics application platform are considered to be actionable pieces of information. This means that they usually require some action to be taken by the user. Therefore, the concept behind notifications is that a user can respond to them in three different ways.
- Take the requested action and inform the system
- Snooze the notification so that it will appear some time later on a more appropriate context where the user can take the action
- Ignore and delete the notification without taking any action.
Given these three options, the notifications Applications Programming Interface (API) allows applications to handle the life cycle of a notification by providing also functions to mark a notification as being actioned, snoozed or dismissed. Finally the API also provides a function for getting the notifications based on a list of filters so that applications can also display and use the notifications for different purposes.
The notifications infrastructure also allows for social collaboration and even crowdsourcing actions to be taken by facilitating the sending of notifications to individuals or to a specific group as a shared notification. The concept of the shared notification relates to the request for a response from users of a particular group where only one person of the group needs to act on the notification in order to be marked as acted. To better understand where this kind of notifications can help a very illustrative example is the retention time observer application in the NUI Galway pilot applications. In this application, the manager can configure the system to send shared group notifications to specific groups to flush a potable water system for a defined minimum time period if the system observed a period of inactivity on a metered system that is in excess of an allowable limit. This allows managers to both monitor and prevent water stagnation and potential negative effects on water quality. Similar applications can be found in many different occasions and contexts and applications can explore the shared notifications feature to motivate and crowdsource activities.
Finally, the application platform uses the users reactions as a motivation mechanism. Depending on their last actions when users achieve a zero-notifications state a message will appear that is customized depending to the last actions of a user in order to encourage more actions to be taken and reward users when doing so with some humorous pleasant message. For example in the case of dismissing most of their latest notification the message could be something that points to the fact in a subtle, humorous and surprising way.
That is why notifications in WAaP are more than simple notifications. They are pervasive, they prompt for actions, they use multiple channels, they are connected with related information such as the applications and the related sensors and they can motivate users to take specific actions, rewarding or pushing them for more.