Push notifications people actually read and trust

Kyiv Digital is a civic super-app used by millions of residents of Kyiv for transport, services, safety alerts, and city updates. During wartime, it also became a life-critical communication channel.

One key product decision: Push notifications don’t disappear. They live on the home screen as a readable notification feed.

Instead of treating push as a one-time interruption, they designed a system where notifications function like short, structured news cards inside the product.

They work with four distinct notification layers:

• Critical (air raid alerts, power outages)
• Service (parking reminders, transport, fines)
• News (city services, social initiatives, events)
• Product updates (explaining new features after release)

In early 2026, notifications reached over 1.5M users, with ~8–9% open rates on large-scale civic pushes — and significantly higher “read” behavior because the home screen is a notification feed.

Combined with deep topic-level settings and dozens of toggles, this creates a highly personalized notification system where users receive only what is relevant to them.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Transform push notifications from interruptions into a core product experience.
• Balance critical alerts and non-critical content in one notification ecosystem.
• Understand the ways personalization, feedback loops, and ethical prompts improve engagement and long-term trust.