What's the best way to draw attention about a thing in the configuration process that may happen or not but that can be very important if it happens?

Question

I've the following problem in my mobile app development.

There are some services which can be launched from the beginning after a device is restarted or whatever that makes it to boot.

Problem is that some mobile manufacturers by default forbid apps to do that unless you explicitly allow them to autostart in a security app the phone owns.

I've ways to check what the phone manufacturer is and open its app to set the autostart, but problem is that it can be hard to do, it may be difficult to know which manufacturers exactly do that, and I'll have to change code for each manufacturer and even maybe for the phone model, this looks like too much work.

So, I'm thinking for a way to make the user read that and check for the option, because, let's be honest if a user is in configuration process he usually even doesn't know what he has accepted or not, he's let's go forward, forward, forward... end.

So which would be a good way so the user says "ok this must be big, I've to stop here" and read the text that explains about manually setting the app to autostart in a configuration process?

Answer 1

Notification design is a big area for design systems and general interface usability considerations, so you have to take this particular issue and compare it with the rest of the type of communication you have with the user. There are several different levels of importance and urgency for the user, and this relates to the level of disruption/interruption you want to cause to their activities.

The most severe of these is a modal (in the case of desktop or web applications) where the screen space is taken up by the message and action required while all other activities are put on hold, and the least amount of impact would be through things like push notifications or toast notifications that can be ignored or dismissed if required. Alternatively you can provide a shortcut for them to come back to it later through highlighting a specific part of the interface where this happens.

If you weigh up this particular issue with the rest of the ones that you trigger notifications for, it will be easier to create a consistent experience for the user.

Answer 2

I understood you are asking how to formulate or highlight one step in the app configuration (i.e., make chat/search available) to ensure users understand they must do something outside your app (i.e., allow autostart somewhere else in phone's settings) before this feature is available.

If that's correct, I'd try three things together:

• change the design of this step from the design of the other steps, adding some importance indicator (color icon) and show it as early as possible (not as the last step, when users are already tired of configuration)
• use as little copy as possible (one short sentence, "To enable chat, do [this]"), as large as possible.
• if you want to be obnoxious, add a confirmation question when the apps determines that the feature has not been enabled, like "Chat is not enabled. Enable by doing [this]" with a checkbox "Do not show this again."