Open Radar

 
Area:
Notification Center

Summary:
In short, iOS 10 changes notifications in Notification Center (also relevant to Banners and lock screen notifications) which bring design and interactions in line with watchOS. This change is regressive compared to the notification design in iOS 9, and introduces multiple usability problems that iOS 9's notifications do not have.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Notification Center with a large number of (missed) notifications in the list.
2. Attempt to quickly scan the notifications' text content in the list.
3. Attempt to quickly see possible actions for multiple notifications in the list.
4. Return to the notification list to continue steps 2 and 3 as necessary.

Expected Results:
1. A long list of (missed) notifications appears on-screen. The design of individual notifications is unobtrusive and, due to variation in the individual notifications' text content, does not appear repetitive.
2. The information hierarchy implied by the design of each individual notification, seen in context of the long list, makes it not only easy to scan the text content of an individual notification, but quick to continue scanning the next notification in the list.
3. Swiping left on an individual notification reveals possible actions without hiding the rest of the notifications list.
4. Since (3) is easily reversible and does not cause the user to lose their spatial position in the list. Plus, notifications can be visually scanned with ease in (2). In total, the user can quickly review and plan possible actions, even more multiple notifications, even for a long list of missed notifications.

Actual Results:
1. A long list of (missed) notifications appears on-screen. The design of each individual notification is now seen many times in repetition down the screen, with the area fill of the notification backgrounds dominating visually.
2. The iOS 10 notification design, as described above, combined with the small heading text now being used, makes it more difficult for the user to discern the information hierarchy for the screen. The area fill makes it more difficult to reposition visual focus to the next relevant text item as well. These design changes, further seen in repetition in the notification list, results in a diminished ability to quickly scan the notifications’ text content.
3. Tapping on an individual notification modally transitions away from the notification list, to a view showing the individual notification and its possible actions. This transition spatially decontextualizes the single notification from rest of the list, making it harder for the user to return to the list and recover their previous position in it. Furthermore, unclear reversibility, unlike iOS 9’s slide-left and slide-back-to-the-right interaction, makes it difficult for the user to identify how they might return to the entire notification list from this view. Finally, since only one notification appears on-screen, there’s a significant amount of unused screen space in this view.
4. Since each attempt to reveal possible actions for a notification involves a transition away from the notification list, followed by a cumbersome transition back, followed by an attempt to recover one’s previous visual position in the list order, it becomes very difficult to scan and casually plan interactions for multiple notifications in the list.

Version:
iOS 10.0 Beta 1 (14A5261v)

Notes:
On watchOS, the chosen visual treatment for a single notification (rounded rectangle with colored background + heading with different color background) works great—watchOS can only show ~1 full notification on screen at once, so they can have aesthetic personality.

These same design choices have different implications on iOS, however, making notifications in Notification Center appear repetitive and harder to read as a result. Unlike watchOS, iOS can present an entire (relatively large) screen filled with multiple notifications.

In practice, this means a few things for notifications on iOS: (1) a single notification appears adjacent to many others on-screen. (2) iOS notifications should minimize spatial context change (i.e. moving away from the list) when users are *considering* an action on one). The second point is what makes iOS 9 notifications so nice: the user can swipe on one notification to see available actions, and swipe back to cancel, without losing place in the list.

Configuration:
iPhone 6s Plus