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Aug. 5, 2016, 9:53 a.m.
Mobile & Apps
LINK: medium.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Shan Wang   |   August 5, 2016

Our friends over at the Guardian Mobile Innovation Lab are running another fun experiment stretching the current imagination on what can be delivered via mobile push notifications — this time around the Olympics, which open in Rio today. (Android users, sign up to participate here.)

Unlike its previous experiments, which focused on single-day (or night) news events, like the June 7 presidential primary or the EU Referendum, this new notifications series will be a sustained experiment through the duration of the summer games. The team will be sending out four different types of notifications, including the intriguing format of actual quizzes within each Android push alert.

Daily Medal Count Leaderboard
— These notifications will arrive around 11:30 EST after the close of each day’s competition and show the top three countries in the overall medal count with their total number of gold, silver, and bronze medals won
— Don’t worry about these waking you up, we’ve set them so they will not make noise or vibrate

Real-time Medal Alerts per country (up to three countries)
— Sign up for real-time updates when countries you want to follow win gold, silver, or bronze
— Note: The outcome of the Rio 2016 Games is anyone’s guess, so we can’t say just when or how often you’ll receive notifications
— Alerts may contain spoilers!

Morale Meter
— We’ll send notifications either just before, or during a big event to poll people about who they’re rooting for or who they think will win

Olympics quizzes
— A Mobile Lab first! We’ll send quiz notifications to test your knowledge
— We’ll track your score and let you know how you ranked against other quiz takers

The Mobile Innovation Lab is hoping to answer some questions around:

— How people respond to web notifications that last more than 1-2 days
— How people interact with a fairly complex signup page for notifications
— How to create individual alert subscriptions on-the-fly for multiple countries
— If the morale meter encourages people to follow our event-based live blogs
— If people enjoy taking a quiz through notifications

Again, to participate with your Android phone, here’s the signup link.

Photo of Rio de Janeiro by Higor de Padua Vieira Neto used under a Creative Commons license.

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