Apple to improve Notification Center with fresh talent

Apple is looking outside its ranks and hiring a college student to help revise its iOS notification system. This isn't any college student. The new hire is Jan-Michael Cart, the whizkid who created a clever mocked up Notification Center redesign and then posted it to YouTube. Cart will join Apple as a UI/UXDesign intern for the next seven months. According to Ars Technica, he, and two other recent hires, may work on notifications for a future version of iOS.

Apple rolled out its current notification center in iOS 5. Earlier versions of iOS included pop-up notifications and badges, but little else. This latest iteration includes a drop-down window shade with alerts, pop-up alerts and lock screen alerts. Though it's a likeable update, the iOS 5 notification center needs improvement. There are no alert icons in the menu bar, which means you have to pull down the Window shade to determine which alerts need your attention. The alerts are also difficult to manage. You can't delete individual alerts without opening the item, and the "x" button to clear all the alerts is difficult to tap.

You can check out Cart's concept video below and tell us what you think of his suggestions in the comments.

[Via Ars Technica]

View Tags

Source: http://janmichaelcart.com/wp/2011/12/12/blog-online/

Categories

iOS

Apple is looking outside its ranks and hiring a college student to help revise its iOS notification system. This isn't any college...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

7 Comments

Filter by:

Uso

So basically they are going to make it look/function more like the Android (that stolen OS apple will go "thermonuclear" on) notification centre? You need interns for six months to work on that?

December 14 2011 at 11:11 PM Report abuse Permalink -1 rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Uso's comment

Leonick

The current notification list is an improvement over the Android one, both are still pretty bad though...
Icecream Sandwhich made it possible to remove individual notifications, iOS needs this, I thought that would be part of it but in the end it was not and it's one of the big flaws. (Would be great to be able to mark a mail as read by removing it's notification for example.)

December 15 2011 at 10:17 AM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

darrell

The mere idea that notifications was this killer-android-winning-feature that iPhone users were left without before iOS5 is laughable. Notifications weren't a big deal and it still isn't now. android users should be more upset with the lackluster software in the marketplace, and the lack of smooth scrolling since day one then they are of iOS5's notification center.

December 19 2011 at 11:16 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mguniverse

Yeah third party widgets would be fun to built, give it to us Apple.

December 14 2011 at 3:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to mguniverse's comment

macserv

There actually is a framework for that... if you jailbreak, it's really easy to build notification center widgets. I can easily see Apple making that framework public in the near future.

December 15 2011 at 2:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rob E.

3rd party widgets really seems more like multi-tasking than notifications, but it seems like it could be nice. What I'd like to see also is not just badges with notification numbers but updateable icons, like how iCal shows the current date, it seems like a weather app could show the current temperature with some image representing the forecast. The Apple weather app icon seems like it's made to do this because shows an actual temperature, but that temperature doesn't seem to be based in reality which makes it more confusing than useful. Other apps could change to show different statuses as well. Is my IM app connected or not? I have to open it to find out.
Also, while the notification center is a huge improvement, access needs to me more intuitive. I knew it was there after the upgrade, but still had to go on-line to remind myself how to find it. For such a pivotal feature, there needs to be a more obvious way to find it. All-in-all I think Cart's demo shows some useful things that could be done, but they aren't the improvements that I would prioritize.

December 14 2011 at 11:37 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Shannon Doherty

It's an improvement but only upon the existing UI/UX and architecture. Otherwise, I would have revamped *EVERYTHING* about it. But that'll never happen.

December 14 2011 at 11:16 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply