Refining the iPhone notification system

I came across an interesting project Tweeted by Aaron Ash (arronash). Peter Hajas has taken it upon himself to rethink the way that the iPhone handles and displays notifications. Check out his blog at peterhajas.com I'm a little unclear on all the details but it got me really excited about the possibilities of a proper notification system on iOS. That said, I'd like to toss out a few of my own ideas on what iOS notifications could and likely should be with iOS 5.0 (fingers crossed).

The enemy! Obtrusive and annoying!

I've yet to see any notification system on the iPhone really deliver as they all fall into the same traps that others have: they become overly complicated by adding new UI paradigms.

UI paradigms are an agreement between developers and users. Put simply, the developer and the user agree that object/environment A will act in such and such a way. When you start to introduce exceptions or changes that breaks that agreement and users become confused.

Other notification replacements have used ‘Activator’ from ‘Cydia’ to bring up a list of previously dismissed notifications. I have found that this has led to issues with the functionality of my iPhone. Apps are not aware of Activator’s methods of activation: shake, slide in from the bottom, tap the status bar, etc. Those methods of activation interfere with games (shake), app launching(slide in), navigation to the top of a window (tap the status bar). My belief is why invent a new IU paradigm when Apple has already given you a good one: double tap the home button.

Double tapping home brings up backgrounding and media controls but it also leaves a lot of dead space that could be filled with dismissed notifications. If the screen lifted another inch or two to reveal notifications in addition to backgrounded apps the excising UI paradigm of iOS 4 would remain in place.

What’s all the empty space doing for you? Combining the double tap multitasking tray with the Spotlight search UI paradigm creates a new system which users will quickly come to understand.

The multitasking tray is left functional and the user gets so much more out of their double tap multitasking screen. I find this approach particularly intuitive because notifications relate directly to multitasking, just as the music playback controls do. After all, notifications like music playback are really just an extension of an app left running while you perform other tasks.

As a side note, my iPhone is jailbroken so that bar you see under the playback controls is not iOS 4 default. For those that are curious it is there to control my screen brightness.

The same approach to notification collection can and should be taken with displaying the notifications as they come in. Many of the new features of iOS 4 involved a new animation which moves your current display out of the way to reveal the happenings of a screen underneath. The multitasking tray uses these and folders use this.

A system using this animation would be the least obtrusive as it doesn’t cover your current task, it simply moves out of the way. Using this approach for notifications seems the most logical. It suggests to the user: I know you are doing something else but under here there is something else going on you may be interested in.

Holding true to established UI paradigms, there is another iOS notification that uses this approach: the double height status bar. When active, the double height status bar moves the current screen down slightly to make spaces for itself. Apps and users and used to the double height status bar. They both know that when in play they can continue to work: the keyboard still works and text boxes are still visible.

The status bar would lift away and the bottom of the screen would push down and resize to make, both making room for the notification underneath.

A know that there are still a lot of issues that need to be resolved with this approach to notification: how to display notifications on full screen apps, where to display the number of missed notifications to prompt users to double tap home to see them and how to display landscape. I believe full screen apps will just have to become covered in part. Apple really didn’t think that one through even with double height status bars. As for notification counters or some other way to display the number of unattended to notifications, I would like to see the status bar display icons of app notifications that haven’t been attended to or dismissed, though that could fill up fast. Landscape is a no brainer thankfully. It’s not great but it can still show some text and an app icon.

What are your thoughts on notifications, iPhone or otherwise? Have I missed something or am I way off? Let me know!

Hudson