software reuse has its limits
Today my phone buzzed with an emergency notification. The icon resembled the hurricane symbol used by weather alerts. The text said "shelter in place". I looked out the window at the clear blue sky.
I opened the notification and got a slightly longer notice (maybe this was a Google Card?) saying something like "sent on behalf of the emergency something-or-other, Allegheny County, shelter in place". Still confused, I opened that to get the full notification...which said people in such-and-such township are to shelter in place because of a fire at the site of a chemical spill.
Needing to get an alert out and using a system already in place for that (the weather service) makes sense. And, of course, you'll have to use their icons, and of the weather symbols on tap, a hurricane is probably reasonable.
Sending alerts based on current location is a well-understood problem. My provider -- or rather, whatever computer at my provider pushes these notifications -- knew that I was, in fact, in Allegheny County.
But didn't that same system also know that I was nowhere near such-and-such township? And would it have been too hard to put that very important location information into an earlier phase of the alert, instead of waiting for people to click through twice?
I sure hope nobody in such-and-such township got the alert, looked at his phone, looked out the window, said "hurricane? are you nuts?", and went out to rake his leaves.
I opened the notification and got a slightly longer notice (maybe this was a Google Card?) saying something like "sent on behalf of the emergency something-or-other, Allegheny County, shelter in place". Still confused, I opened that to get the full notification...which said people in such-and-such township are to shelter in place because of a fire at the site of a chemical spill.
Needing to get an alert out and using a system already in place for that (the weather service) makes sense. And, of course, you'll have to use their icons, and of the weather symbols on tap, a hurricane is probably reasonable.
Sending alerts based on current location is a well-understood problem. My provider -- or rather, whatever computer at my provider pushes these notifications -- knew that I was, in fact, in Allegheny County.
But didn't that same system also know that I was nowhere near such-and-such township? And would it have been too hard to put that very important location information into an earlier phase of the alert, instead of waiting for people to click through twice?
I sure hope nobody in such-and-such township got the alert, looked at his phone, looked out the window, said "hurricane? are you nuts?", and went out to rake his leaves.