Notification Nation is my Capstone research project, done as a part of a PLTW Biomedical Innovations course. We all receive a lot of notifications every day, from every imaginable source. That weighs on us and serves as a real stressor in many people's lives. I'm running this research to help myself understand where most people receive notifications from, and for what, so I can help inform my Capstone's end products.

The findings from these two data collections will help me plan design prototypes of new kinds of notification inboxes. Knowing where and why people receive notifications helps me plan a better system for everyone involved.

The data that you submit to either the Notification Volume form or Mailroom is used to identify trends in where people receive notifications in volume, being push notifications or email messages. It's analyzed in aggregate, meaning that all submissions have their data included in totals that combine data from all submissions, not just your own.

Screenshots and answers submitted to the Notification Volume form are stored in Notion. If personally identifiable information is submitted, the response is edited by myself to remove it (such as a device name). The amount of notifications that each app sends is counted and added to an aggregate total for that specific app. This data will be deleted at the end of May 2025.

Please feel free to reach out to capstone@jordanhas.fun at any time.

After you submit data, it needs to be processed before it can be used in aggregate. First, data is prepared by being retrieved in its original format, and then anonymized. I either manually or use a LLM to remove personally identifiable information, such as a device name for the Notification Volume collection form, or names and email addresses from email messages collected via Mailroom. From this point, anonymized data is always used in aggregate and individual response data is usually replaced with the anonymized versions created during data processing. Original versions may be stored for up to 90 days after anonymization, but is never used for analysis.

Your data is always stored in a secure and private manner. Screenshots and answers submitted to the Notification Volume form are stored anonymously on the Notion platform, and may be downloaded to the computer of myself, the researcher. All data submitted to the Notification Volume form will be deleted at the end of May 2025.

You can choose to withdraw from the data collection at any time by emailing capstone@jordanhas.fun. For the Notification Volume form, please include the date and time when you submitted your screenshots to allow me to identify your response and remove it, as that is submitted completely anonymously. If you don't have this information, please try to find the screenshots or tell me which apps you currently have at the top of your notification averages list to help me find your response based on contextual clues.