And
this is either the worst thing to ever happen in the history of smartphones, or
a non-issue, depending on your predisposition for outrage.
HTC didn't create any greater a sin than
any other apps we've seen. But there is room for improvement.
What's one more swipe in the scheme of
things, really? And for that matter, what percentage of notifications received
on your phone are truly useful? Or what about emails that can be casually
dismissed either in the notification area, or by a single swipe in Gmail. I
have phones that constantly remind me of the outside temperature, which in
August in Florida doesn't mean a damn thing. It's hot. Period.
(My favorite act of swiping ridiculousness
also is in Gmail, actually. I'm a little obsessive when it comes to unread
items. That means everything in my "Promotions" tab either gets read
or swiped at some point — including the ads that Google now sticks up top.
Swipe away one of those ads, and Google asks you to tell it why you'd ever do
such a thing. Because it's there! is
the thought I always think. But that's the end of it. It's gone, and I'm over
it. Same was my reaction to the "Fantastic Four" theme.)
Notifications are, of course, noisy by
nature. They're actually divided into three priorities in Android 5.0 Lollipop, with the
highest priority notifications popping up on whatever you're looking at —
heads-up style. That's not what HTC used in promoting the Fantastic Four and
its theme, obviously. (And if it had, I'd be singing a completely different
tune here.) And I'd argue that HTC has entered a bit of a gray area here, using
a notification to promote what certainly is paid-for content — the theme
— but that sponsored content is still legit content. And to be fair, HTC
publicly told us earlier this year that we'd see more brand partnerships with themes. But if every app on your phone — or even half
of them — started promoting things whenever they felt like it, we'd never
get anything done.
So, a
few suggestions for HTC in this case:
Promote sparingly. Folks are going to complain no matter what. This is the
Internet, after all. But think long and hard about the frequency of such
promotions. Maybe what Marvel (or the movie studio or whomever) paid for the
promotion made the backlash worth it this time. But there absolutely is a line
that can be crossed. And the bad news is it's probably not visible until you've
crossed it.
Make notifications easy to
disable. This is all
tied into the Sense Home app on HTC's phones. And I can go deep into the app
settings and shut down notifications at that level. But that's not a good user
experience. HTC should add a simple toggle somewhere allowing users to opt out
of those promotion notifications. That's a small thing that will add a lot of
goodwill.
Or better yet, have proper
notifications. Don't just
notify me when you're making money on it. Let me receive notifications on
future themes in specific categories of my choosing. Then maybe throw in a
recommendation every now and then. That might make the promoted themes a little
easier for folks to swallow.
All in
all — at least in my book — this isn't a huge thing. It's an opportunity
for HTC to surface new content. And it's not like Marvel's some unpopular
outlier, either. (The FF theme has been downloaded nearly 10,000 times as of
this writing.) But users don't like being surprised, and they don't like not
having control. HTC's got plenty of room to continue promoting themes, but also
plenty of room to improve the experience.
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