Notifications

Status: Future Feature

Keeping users informed without overwhelming them.

Overview

Notifications alert users to relevant activity - friend updates, interactions on their content, and goal milestones. We prioritize relevance over frequency.

Requirements

• Push notifications (mobile)
• Email notifications (digest)
• Notification preferences
• Real-time notifications (WebSockets)
• Notification grouping
• Mark all as read
• Notification history

Notification Types

Social

• Friend actions
  • Friend started reading a book
  • Friend finished a book
  • Friend rated/reviewed a book
  • Should probably end up weighting this to commonly interacted with friends so its not spamming
• Someone liked your review (should probably aggregate these so we aren't spamming)
• Someone commented on your review (same as above)

Goals & Progress

• Reading goal milestone reached
• Streak milestone (7 days, 30 days, etc.)
• Year in review ready
• Falling behind goal
  • probably once a month at most

Book Clubs (Future)

• New discussion in your club
• Book club deadline approaching
• Voting opened for next book
• Voting closed, new book selected

User Stories

• As a user, I want to know when friends interact with my reviews
• As a user, I want to see when friends finish books I'm interested in
• As a user, I want control over what notifications I receive
• As a user, I don't want to be overwhelmed with notifications

Design Principles

1. Relevant - Only notify about things users care about
2. Configurable - Users control notification preferences
3. Grouped - Batch similar notifications ("3 friends finished...")
4. Respectful - Support quiet hours and digest mode
5. Actionable - Notifications lead to meaningful actions

Notification Preferences (Post-Beta)

Users can configure per notification type:

• In-app: On/Off
• Push: On/Off
• Email: Instant / Daily digest / Weekly digest / Off