A few days ago I took a nap and set the DND –do not disturb– on a timer for 1h. Once the timer finished it went by default to "Turn off DND", which is the same as "disturb me please".
It's worth mentioning that before setting the DND for an hour, I had it one a schedule so it wouldn't disturb me from 10:30 pm to 8:30 am. It didn't go back to this one, it went to "disturb me please".
It's probably also worth mentioning that there is another mode called "Auto turn on", which detects when you're sleeping to avoid awakening you. Because this thing knows when I'm sleeping. But someone decided that the default should be to awaken someone if they receive an email at 2am.
So the thing that I bought precisely to improve my sleeping was designed to wake me up in the middle of the night.
Because of this I was wondering when did the "disturb" mode became the default? This applies to my phone as well, which I always have with DND turned on. How is it that we have to _turn on_ DND. Shouldn't it be "turn on disturb mode"?
What are the arguments that support this behaviour from a UX point of view?
-end of rant
Though, perhaps you explained it poorly, what's wrong with it turning off DND mode when your 1hr DND timer expires? What else is the point of the timer?
Does that smartwatch not let you toggle DND off until you decide to toggle it back on? Is there no silent mode?
I keep my iPhone on silent-mode almost permanently. Maybe it's time to try any of the other brands with this elementary feature?
But to answer your question, people generally want to be disturbed by notifications. Just consider how many people don't keep their phone in silent mode. I don't think it's the ideal way to live, but people love running over to their phone to see if it's a new WhatsApp message that cause the ping. Certainly my girlfriend and roommates and all the people I hear day to day who have notification sounds turned on when there's a physical switch on the device to turn them off.
Still, a silent-mode switch already gives you your dream of "I want to opt-in to being disturbed". Apparently every smartwatch except your Xiaomi watch has it. Time to switch.
What I think is wrong is the default being "DND off". I mean, I wished it went back to the previous mode, which was the scheduled DND, but I understand if after the timer the device goes into "default" mode. The piece I don't get is "DND off" being the default mode, as if I was looking forward to be disturbed. Especially if this device in particular knows when I'm sleeping, and there's a mode that is pretty much "DND if I'm sleeping". Maybe I'm looking forward to getting notifications, but who thought I would also be looking forward to be awaken to get them?
> Does that smartwatch not let you toggle DND off until you decide to toggle it back on? Is there no silent mode?
Yes, the silent mode is just DND, it doesn't have sleep mode, or airplane mode, just the DND.
> But to answer your question, people generally want to be disturbed by notifications.
That might be true, and it also might be the reason for "disturb" being the default mode. It's beyond my comprehension, but it wouldn't be the first time when the general public has a different opinion than mine.
And this also brings something up. People generally want to be disturbed by notifications, and *potentially disturb anybody else in the process*. I mean, I wish I didn't have to endure all the buzzing/blinking/noise coming from devices nearby.
Path dependence. That's all.
It used to be fine in the past. At the beginning of the smartphone era, there just weren't that many disruptions to warrant a DND mode. Most notifications were interesting. And we didn't have wearable devices tethered to phones or computers either. The normalization of distraction kind of got us by surprise, society-wide, and it's only now that new UX patterns are developing to help people manage it.
I've enjoyed not having to buy an alarm clock for many, many years. A phone allows me to change the noise I wake up to and set multiple alarms at random intervals. I now rarely sleep through the alarms - no more hoping that the alarm clock had a good noise and no more suddenly finding out I no longer wake to it (and yes, I sleep through them: They'd wake up others in the house. Yes, this is even with good sleep hygiene.)
Music comes from tech, too. This is especially helpful to cover up small noises in my house or the apartments around me: The small noises disturb me more when falling asleep than a radio/television going on. (The same has been true of studying: A quiet library is an experience of interruption. So. Many. Noises.)
I've lived more than one place where my tech had to be in my bedroom if I wanted any sort of privacy while using it.
Much better to be diligent about using it. It sucks that the poster seemed to be doing this, and I understand their complaint. It seems to me that it is a software oversight, but like they said, "disturb" is the norm, so we probably won't get real relief until standards change.
Phones are noisy, and phones are distracting: how often do you need to quickly check the weather and instead you read your notifications? Keeping it in airplane mode at night is a big life improvement.
I have all my sounds and notifications disabled, and my phone is always on do not disturb. Family and close friends are the only ones who can get through the wall of silence and actually ring my phone. This works very well for me. It might take some adjusting, but being able to control bottom up attention signals so that they are meaningful again is surely worth it for many people.
What I do with my phone is turn off wifi and data so that in case of emergency someone could call (or text) me but anything internet-related is disabled.
Personally I have had email alerts turned off for the last decade and I dont sleep with my phone- its the ultimate DND.
I wish I could get an answer to this same question. I recently bought an Apple watch, mostly lured by the oximeter, and decided to wear it at night to monitor my sleep too, because after COVID I became a light sleeper.
It knows I'm sleeping, but the damn thing used to tick my wrist at 3 am to congratulate me about closing my movement circle, waking me up. It got better at staying quiet after a couple of weeks, but I had to manually configure a sleep schedule because it can't tell on its own. I blame imprecise machine learning.
I don't think manufacturers have anything to gain by disturbing you, it's just that phones have become increasingly needy on its own, because of all the notifications that we agreed to.
Haha, same. I don't use the DND mode, I just leave vibrate on but no sound. Some people complain from time to time that they can't reach me but I figure if it's something important it will reach me eventually.