Underway 的情境感知提醒：知道你今天是否已拍攝影片

context aware reminders are reminders that check the situation before they say anything. a plain reminder fires at a time with words written in advance. a context aware one looks at a fact first, such as whether the pill box was opened, whether you are leaving the house, or whether today's work is already done, and then decides whether to speak and what to say.

underway's daily reminder now works this way. it is written at the moment it is sent, from what you have actually filmed today on the website or the phone. filmed already? it says today's episode is in and offers room for another. nothing yet? it says so, plainly. on a day you paused, it says nothing at all.

this piece covers what context aware reminders are, where the idea comes from, how to design one that people keep reading, and how underway's version works, step by step.

today on the phone. the reminder reads the same facts this screen shows: whether today's episode exists yet.

what context aware reminders are

a reminder has two parts: when it fires, and what it says. in a normal reminder both are fixed when you set it up. you choose seven o'clock and "take your vitamins", and that is what you get, every day, whatever happened in between.

a context aware reminder makes one or both of those parts depend on the world at the time. the research that ranks for this phrase sorts the context into a handful of kinds, and they are a useful checklist:

time and date: the plain alarm, plus things like weekdays only, or not on a holiday.
location: remind me when i arrive at the shop, or when i leave the office. the iphone's reminders app can do this, and it can also remind you when you are messaging a particular person.
activity: remind me after a meeting ends, when i stop typing, when the laptop closes.
state: remind me only if the thing has not been done yet. the medication example is the classic one: a reminder that fires only when a dose is due, has not been taken and is safe to take.
preference and identity: who you are and how you like to be asked, which changes the words rather than the timing.

most of the academic work is about health and smart homes, because a reminder that fires at the wrong moment there has a real cost. a study on medication adherence designs reminders around whether a dose has been taken. a smart home project lets people write "remind me to check the stove before i leave the house" in plain language. team tools have the same idea in a smaller form: a standup bot that only nudges the people who have not answered yet.

why context aware reminders beat a fixed alarm

the problem with a fixed alarm is not that it is annoying. it is that it is wrong about you some of the time, and a reminder that is wrong about you trains you to ignore it. you swipe it away without reading it. then on the day you really have forgotten, you swipe that one away too.

the most common way a fixed reminder is wrong is that the thing is already done. you went for the run at seven, and at six the app asks if you have run today. you filed the report at lunch, and at five the calendar tells you to file it. each one is a small proof that the reminder does not know anything, and the proofs add up.

	a fixed alarm	a context aware reminder
when it fires	at the time you set	at the time you set, or when a condition is met
what it says	words written when you set it up	words written from what is true now
when the job is already done	asks anyway	says it is done, or stays quiet
on a day off	fires unless you remembered to turn it off	knows it is a day off
what you learn to do with it	swipe it away	read it, because it is usually right

how to design a reminder people keep reading

if you are building one, or choosing an app that has one, these are the rules that matter more than the clever triggers.

check one fact that actually matters. a reminder does not need to know everything about you. it needs to know the one thing that decides whether it should speak.
keep the cue steady. a habit forms around a cue that arrives the same way each time. moving the time around to be clever about it turns a habit into a guessing game.
say nothing when nothing is needed. silence on a holiday is a feature, not a missing notification.
never reproach. no counting what you missed, no guilt in the words. a reminder that scolds is one people switch off.
make dismissing it free. no second ask, no escalation, no penalty for saying not now.
fail safe. if the reminder cannot check its fact, it should still arrive, with words that do not claim to know.

context aware reminders in underway

underway is a video diary for founders. once a day, whenever suits you, it asks you questions out loud about your work and cuts your answers into a numbered episode. you can film in the morning, after a meeting, or several times in one day. the reminder is the backstop for the days you have not.

the one fact that matters for a daily video diary is whether today's episode exists yet. until this change the reminder did not check it. on the phone it was a local alarm, scheduled days ahead with its words already fixed, so it could not know you had filmed on the website that morning, and at the time you picked it asked you to film anyway.

now the reminder is decided on underway's server, which can see every episode in your account, whichever surface it was filmed on. these are the things it can say:

filmed once today: today's episode is in. has anything happened since? there's room for another, or leave it there.
filmed more than once: it counts them, so two episodes in today.
nothing filmed yet on a day you committed to: nothing filmed yet today, and a line about a few minutes on camera about today.
a day outside your commitment, a weekend if you chose weekdays: no episode due today, and an offer to grab a fifteen second moment if something happens.
a day you paused: nothing. the phone stays quiet.

the app already knew when today was done. the reminder now reads the same thing before it buzzes.

how the context aware reminder works, step by step

you pick the time once, under rhythm, when the prompt arrives, on the website or the phone. the reminder comes at that time every day.
when the iphone app signs in, it tells underway which time zone it is in. from then on the reminder is sent from the server rather than scheduled on the phone.
every few minutes the server looks for founders whose reminder time has come, in their own time zone.
for each one it reads the finished episodes for today, from the website and the phone alike, and checks your commitment and any pause.
it writes the words from that, and sends the reminder to your phone.
the day is claimed before anything is sent, so a slow run never sends it twice. one reminder a day, never more.

a phone that cannot reach the server keeps its own alarm, so the reminder never simply stops. its words no longer claim that nothing has been filmed, because in that case it cannot know.

what it never says

the rules on the reminder have not changed, and they matter more now that it knows things. it never names a time of day, because an episode is filmed whenever suits you. it never mentions the streak or a day you missed. dismissing it costs nothing: no second ask, no guilt copy.

and it never raises the bar. an episode already in is enough. the offer of another is there for a day when more happened, not as a target. underway never proposes raising your commitment either; lowering it is a normal change in settings.

a declared pause is the clearest case of a context aware reminder doing less. one tap of holiday mode and the streak survives, and the reminder respects it by not arriving at all. there is no reason to give and no limit on how often you can use it.

the kind of moment a reminder should not interrupt with a request you already met. an ai illustration, not a customer.

the time you pick still matters

the reminder arrives at the same time every day, because a cue that moves is not a habit. what changed is that the time no longer has to guess when you will film.

so set it for the latest point you would want to be asked. if you have filmed by then, it is a nod. if you have not, it is the backstop. after a few weeks underway learns when you usually film, and if your reminder sits well away from that, today offers once to move it. leave it, and it never asks again.

if the reminder is for a daily video, the journal app it belongs to: daily video journal app.

faqs

what are context aware reminders?

reminders that check a fact about the situation, such as your location, your activity or whether the task is already done, before deciding whether to fire and what to say. a fixed alarm fires at a set time with words written in advance.

does the reminder know about episodes i film on the website?

yes. it is written by underway's server from every finished episode in your account, so an episode filmed on the website counts the same as one filmed on the phone.

can i get more than one reminder a day?

no. one a day, at the time you picked. if you have already filmed, that one reminder says so and offers room for another.

what happens on a day i paused?

nothing. a declared pause is a holiday, so the reminder stays quiet and the streak survives.

do i need to update the app?

the iphone app updates itself. once it has, it tells underway its time zone the next time it opens, and the reminder comes from the server from then on.

can i change when it arrives?

yes, under rhythm, when the prompt arrives, on the website or the phone. pick the latest time you would want to be asked.

how a pause keeps a streak alive without a reason or a limit: habit tracker vacation mode.

the habit side of posting, without a target to fail: how to stay consistent with posting.

Originally published at https://underway.life/context-aware-reminders