Socket Jockeying

When I go out in the evening and weekends, there is one thing that can frequently distract me, fill me with unwarranted anxiety, and sometimes ruin my free time.  It’s when my normally helpful (during work days/times) always connected, always on, email device drops in new email from the office.

Yes, that’s why folks like me have such devices.  So, that we can get email anytime and anywhere.  However, there are still times in my life where work is “off” no matter how urgent the issue (say vacation, or a holiday, or just a night out on the town).

Unfortunately, the always on email doesn’t respect this.  It’s “always on” and keeps coming throughout my break.  When I had a very early Blackberry of yore, this wasn’t an issue for me.  Back then they weren’t phones.  Instead they were only email/calendaring devices.  If I didn’t want to be bothered by the office, I left my Blackberry at home in a drawer.

However, now my smartphone/Blackberry/Treo/whatever, is also my phone and I never go anywhere without my phone (well almost never).  And so, I find myself filled with undue anxiety and frustration, when I should be decompressing and enjoying myself.  To me, this could be solved with one simple UX innovation: a “nights and weekends mode”.

This is really just a profile (in mobile phone parlance) that turns off all the notifications/alarms/buzzers/dialogs/etc. that indicate that you’ve received new email.  It should be simple to enable/disable and it should only affect email.  It’s a feature that I’m rather surprised hasn’t come out (at least I’m not aware of it) on any of the major platforms – be that Plam, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile.

Some devices can  easily turn off notifications, but these frequently apply to all notifications/messages – this is broken as I use SMS messages for personal communication almost as much as I do voice.

On my Q, I’m left to drill into the painful settings area (sounds) and scroll to find the line item that controls email notification (thank goodness that this is even allowed).  I can disable this by setting the sound to “none” and remembering what it was set to before so I may return it to its rightful place after my break time.  It can and should be better.