Push notifications people actually read and trust

Push notifications interrupt, inform, and warn. So how do you design them in a way people trust?

In Kyiv Digital, a city super-app used by over 4 million Kyiv residents, push notifications became more than just a delivery channel. What started as a service for transport tickets, parking, and petitions turned into a life-critical communication tool during wartime, warning about air raids and power outages.

The core challenge remained the same: building trust between the city and its residents.

Kyiv Digital doesn‘t rely on traditional acquisition and retention tactics. Growth is driven by the product itself and word of mouth, where trust is built through personalization, sensitivity to context, and attention to users‘ emotional state — especially in high-stakes situations.

As a result, critical alerts, service messages, city updates, and product changes can coexist in one system without overwhelming users, without forcing a choice between urgency and relevance.

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.