Icons instead of Profile Avatars for some notifications in the Notification Center

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d love some visual differentiation to different types of in-app notifications in the NC. 

Why? 

• Different notifications have different use cases / value props, and what might visually cue me to click into the notification may be different.
• Using the profile Avatar may create a generic looking notification feed when profile photo/avatar adoption is low:

Which Notifications?

• New topic in a subscribed Category/Group
  • I’m subscribed to the category or group because I want to hear about new posts, not necessarily from a specific person. 
  • Possible alternatives:
    • CC platform icon for Topic Type (question, conversation, article, product update, idea)
    • Category thumbnail image (already something we have to style for categories and groups, but not often visible in the platform)
• Question Answered
  • The useful information is that question I subscribe to has an answer marked, not necessarily who provided it. 
  • FWIW, the default phrasing for this notification ( notification.center.messages.topicAnswered) makes no mention of the Answer Author, which could lead to confusion (“is that the avatar for the author of the Q or the A?”) 
    • Note: If you want to do this add the {username} variable to the phrase. 
• Group Invite and approvals
  • I don’t use groups, so it’s not important to me, but the same logic as the “New topic” suggestion applies:
  • What’s most relevant is the group, not who invited you.

Potential Impact

• More visual variance in the NC, but in a way that should entice additional clicks into the notifications
• Visual “noise” (avatars) replaced with relevant context (topic type / category thumbnail)

Use Cases

Answer notifications looking more like this: 

• As a super user, I want to know when an answer is marked on a question I’ve replied to, in order to… 

  • Know if it’s my answer or someone else’s (gamification motivation)

    • Answer author context is semi-relevant to me

  • Learn what the best answer is (learning motivation)

  • Turn off email notifications for answers, but still be able to easily see when answers are marked via the NC. 

• As a user with the same question, I want to know when an answer is marked on a question I have followed, in order to

  • Learn and apply that information.

    • Answer author context is not very relevant to me, plus available when I click into the thread.  

  • Turn off email notifications for answers, but still be able to easily see when answers are marked via the NC. 

• As a community manager / digital self-service lead, I want to cultivate community behaviors of learning from newly marked answers in the community, in order to… 

  • Increase the knowledge of community members. 

  • Build a Q&A culture that’s less about transactional answers and more about collective learning

Topic Notifications looking more like either of these options

• As a super user, I want to know when questions are asked (or asked in specific forums), in order to help solve them and {fulfill a gamification motivation}
  • Earn points
  • Earn category-specific or answer-specific badges
  • Move up in the ranks
  • Move up the leaderboard
• As a multi-product customer / multi-category subscriber, I want to know when topics are posted to the various categories I subscribe to, in order to…
  • Decide if I want to click into that topic
  • Catch up on conversations I haven’t read
  • Prioritize which topics I want to view

TL;DR

My hypothesis is that having these notifications look the same as others (with user avatars) makes users less likely to click into these types of topics. Whereas replacing the avatar with a more relevant category thumbnail or content type icon would make them more likely to click into those types of topics.