Analytics for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Alert principles

There are some principles to follow when designing an alert system, even a simple one that will be part of a dashboard:

• Balance alert sensitivity to minimize false positives: People will learn quickly to ignore alerts if they rarely identify an actual problem. This has to be balanced against missing too many real issues though. A cost benefit calculation can be used to help in this decision. [cost of investigating a problem] * [number of alerts] < [cost of actual problem] * [probability of true positive] The left side of that equation should be noticeably less than the right side.
• Be wary of alert fatigue: A long list of continuous alerts is daunting, and human brains tend to become conditioned over time to recognize it ...