Micro-Interactions on Smartphones: An Email Notification Redesign

The mental effort spent by a user to identify an important email from an email notification is considered significantly high or impossible. A user must enter the email application to determine the type of email they have received. To let the user identify the type of e-mail via smartphone notification, micro-interactions are utilized. The augmentation in UX of the email notifications is then tested w.r.t the modifications made to the micro-interactions. This research concludes the decrease in cognitive load in the e-mail notifications of a smartphone by effective application of design principles in micro-interactions. Regardless of the increased number of email arrival on a device, a smartphone user can now identify the important e-mails on a smartphone directly from the email notifications. Following the Google’s Material design principles resulted in increased user experience of e-mail notifications on a smartphone. However, future work in this area requires the evaluation of the future design trends which are then applicable to the system.