On Thu, 26 Jul 2018, Chris Adams wrote:
My biggest concern is them making such alerts mandatory. At a minimum they should be opt-out; a one-time notice during setup (or when the functionality is added) to allow opt-in would be better IMHO.
That's a reason to get involved early, when everything is voluntary and the decisions haven't been decided yet. Even though no rule requires it, Google adds emergency alerts to the top of its search result pages. google.org/publicalerts shows government alerts around the world. Google does a nice job of integrating the results, even giving suggestions about what to do for several standard types of alerts. Its possible to create a nice user-focused design. When I was the SBC (now AT&T) u-verse "emergency alert product manager," because no one else wanted that job, I discovered the EAS/WEA rules are very flexible. Lots of things being done by competitors weren't actually required. Instead it was because things had always done that way, not because any rule required it. For example, I added a "dismiss alert" button to u-Verse EAS alert product so you could immediately get ride of alerts you didn't care about or change channels. I also worked with the IPTV middleware vendor to ensure u-verse EAS alerts were not recorded by the DVR, and didn't interrupt the DVR recording. One advantage of not recording the EAS by the u-verse DVR, if EAS came during the game-winning home-run during the World Series, you could hit rewind on the DVR and see/hear what you missed because it was still recording in the background. I've felt that some companies deliberately make the emergency notification product on their cell phones and cable/tv as attrocious as possible as a middle-finger response to the government requiring them to do it. Because almost all emergency notifications are voluntary, company product managers can give you a lot of choice which, when, and how you get emergency notifications. But its easier/cheaper for product managers to treat it as a compliance thing, lobby against it, and not spend any effort on a user-centered design for their alert notifications. I keep expecting after catastrophe happens in pacific northwest or silicon valley, some company executives and product managers will suddenly add emergency notifications to their smart speaker and smart tv product roadmaps.