Notification Center concepts. We need to start over.

[AngryNil]

Argument number one for the not needing a notification center is the live tiles.

That's not argument number one, that's invalid argument number one. Live Tiles have to be pinned, do not sync with toast notifications and often show little textual content.

I'm saying that what users are requesting - aggregation of missing toasts - does not need to be accessible from any app in a minimum number of presses. That's all people want, and that's something people can actively navigate to because you want to achieve something - read missed notifications. There's no reason why that needs to be more accessible than the app list.

Here's a common scenario: receive Whatsapp message, missed the toast. I'm currently, say, in Internet Explorer. So do tell, why is it so terrible that you'd have to go start button -> swipe to see what the notification was from and what it is, rather than pulling down from the status bar (which, of course, is hidden by default in IE - yet another problem with the idea)?

There really isn't. This is serious nitpick territory. And there is much less overlap than you think, if the notification centre approach is done half-logical.

 

[thed]

I've been a big advocate for a notification center for a long time, but I don't feel like it's really necessary to access it from within apps. I really just want it so I can see the notifications that I missed. But if I'm in another app, I'm going to see the toast popping up. I'm fine with just having it accessible from the home screen.
Sent from my HTC Trophy using Board Express

 

[ALpHa.Q.RoUgH]

I'm willing to bet that Microsoft has had these conversations over the past year and still hasn't addressed it,maybe because it's not necessary and your just ripping off OS/Android.

However, I'm not knocking it, it just doesn't seem plausible. My interpretation of the matter was that the Live Tile is your notification.

 

[Wyn6]

The Me tile shows my last social update...so long as I only had one.

Just so you're aware, the ME Tile will show you the number of updates you have after the first. It will say you have x updates where x = a number.

My ESPN app shows the last score of the 1 team that I chose to display. .

SportScores is the app I use for scores. The WP7 version you could have up to 4 teams on the Live Tile and it refreshed every few minutes. However, it seems in WP8 the developer has gone back to having only two teams. This is still more than ESPN. So, this is really up to the devs.

Again, WP doesn't even let you show the status bar within an app, why do you think they'd want you seeing notifications within an app?

Again, this behavior is up to devs. And, indeed there are quite a few apps that you can see the status bar while within them.

I wrote this big long post and then read Angrynil's post and that pretty much sums up how I feel about it. So, I deleted it.

 

[Darus214]

How about a long press of the search button? The long press of the back button goes to multitasking, the windows buttons goes to voice search, and the search button could be for multitasking.

 

[jaqueh]

How about a long press of the search button? The long press of the back button goes to multitasking, the windows buttons goes to voice search, and the search button could be for multitasking.

i don't see how you guys see the back arrow as multitasking. I thought people who were complaining about iOS's multitasking were right, but then I moved onto WP8. You can only go back to your last 6 or so actions!

 

[Skeet1981]

I see the start screen as a notification bar anyway, and the windows button is as good as dragging down androids notification bar. If something is really important its pretty easy to stick the particular tile to the top of the home screen.

It is quite a revamp of the traditional windows that's been around for over twenty years. It does take quite a bit of getting used to.

But like I say, if you think of the home screen as your notification bar and just hit the windows button everytime you want to check for things, you just have to hit back and you're right back where you were.

 

[jessecabrera]

What if the notification center was in the Bing search. When you hit the search button, there is so much unused space. What if notifications showed up there?

 

[Averry]

That's not argument number one, that's invalid argument number one. Live Tiles have to be pinned, do not sync with toast notifications and often show little textual content.

I'm saying that what users are requesting - aggregation of missing toasts - does not need to be accessible from any app in a minimum number of presses. That's all people want, and that's something people can actively navigate to because you want to achieve something - read missed notifications. There's no reason why that needs to be more accessible than the app list.

Here's a common scenario: receive Whatsapp message, missed the toast. I'm currently, say, in Internet Explorer. So do tell, why is it so terrible that you'd have to go start button -> swipe to see what the notification was from and what it is, rather than pulling down from the status bar (which, of course, is hidden by default in IE - yet another problem with the idea)?

There really isn't. This is serious nitpick territory. And there is much less overlap than you think, if the notification centre approach is done half-logical.

Hahaha. You can invalidate an argument I suppose, but it's still an argument, and argument isn't spawned in an invalid state.

I'm just saying, when people argue AGAINST notification centers, it's because the live tiles exist. I think there needs to be a notification center, maybe not for all users, but I think for the betterment of the platform it needs it. But I just haven't been sold on any idea I've seen so far, and if they do it, it needs to be as good or better than Android and iOS. Not a tacked on app.

 

[Coolknight1968]

In a good chart, the past is to the left, the future to the right. I want it to the left, as notifications are things I got in the past (few seconds ago.).

 

[brmiller1976]

I still see the "notification center" as a kludgy crutch for the dated, crusty Android and iOS UIs. A properly-configured, personalized Live Tile setup is orders of magnitude more useful.

I worry that ripping off the crust and barnacles from legacy OSes like Android and iOS and slapping them on Windows Phone will hurt usability.

 

[mpelti]

I still see the "notification center" as a kludgy crutch for the dated, crusty Android and iOS UIs. A properly-configured, personalized Live Tile setup is orders of magnitude more useful.

I worry that ripping off the crust and barnacles from legacy OSes like Android and iOS and slapping them on Windows Phone will hurt usability.

Yes, live tiles do offer an improvement over windowshade notification centers. Hopefully devs start taking full advantage of those capabilities. But there are scenarios in which live tiles are not enough:

If the phone buzzes, and you don't catch the toast, there's no way to see which app had the notification. If all 5 of your lockscreen apps had alerts, it's a crapshoot to figure out which just buzzed the phone, no matter how properly configured your tiles are. In this scenario, swiping left from home to a notification history would be a great solution. But another nice option would be to make the tiles even more live. Have the most recent notifications do something extra to call attention to them, the symbol on the tile could blink, or "breathe" almost like a notification light until it reaches a certain age, or just change color if they have new alerts since the home screen was last seen.

The other scenario is more frustrating. The concept of tiles is about quick glances for info, but if I'm reading an article in IE or a book in Kindle, and i get a toast, I may not pay attention to it, and without a notification tray, i'm back to the first scenario. On android or ios, I can pull down the shade and see what the notification was, without having to dismiss it or leave the app I'm in. That's why going home, tapping on a live tile to get the update, going home, and then having to resume, is a bad alternative. Swiping down from the top of the screen is a really intuitive behaviour on other platforms, mostly due to the almost-always on status bar at the top of the screen. WP8 doesn't often show the status bar, so a down swipe may not be as intuitive without some visual cue up there, such as a solid colored bar across the top pixel row or two, or having a symbol show up opposite the time, if there is a notification pending.

While I do like the WP8 interface, I feel like there are a lot of "form over function" decisions like this that make it a tough choice for many people. If people wanted to be told how to do things, and that the OS knows best, they'd buy iphones.

 

[tk-093]

On Android/iOS you can't launch the notification center when you're playing a game like angry birds, etc.

Yes you can. I just did it on my GS3 with Angry Birds Star Wars loaded. The first swipe down just brings down the task bar, and then you can swipe a second time to actually pull down the entire notification center. iOS does the same thing. First swipe brings down this little tab then you can pull down the whole center if you want.

 

[tk-093]

I still see the "notification center" as a kludgy crutch for the dated, crusty Android and iOS UIs. A properly-configured, personalized Live Tile setup is orders of magnitude more useful.

I worry that ripping off the crust and barnacles from legacy OSes like Android and iOS and slapping them on Windows Phone will hurt usability.

I'm not sure I agree. I mean, sure, have a live tile with them in there for when i unlock my device, but if I'm already inside of an app, I also think I would like to pull down a list so I can decide if I want to deal with anything messages.

If all I have is a live tile then I need to stop the app I'm in, return to the home screen and launch my Notification tile. Then if I'm not thinking and accidently relaunch the original app from it's tile instead of using the back arrow, I've then reset my app from the start.

I want a tile, AND some type of swipe menu... It's not like Windows 8 isn't already full of 'swiping in from the egdes' already.....

 

[jwinch2]

Here's my opinion - what's the big deal?

Having it on the left of the tiles means one more button press than a drop-down drawer. Reality check - the app list is similarly a two-step procedure on Android as well as Windows Phone. Are people complaining about that?

The notification center on Android is not two step process. It is simply a pull down from the top and works regardless of what app you are in. If I am understanding this correctly, what the OP is wanting more than anything to a way to receive notifications without having to leave an app that you may have open at the time.

 

[jwinch2]

I still see the "notification center" as a kludgy crutch for the dated, crusty Android and iOS UIs. A properly-configured, personalized Live Tile setup is orders of magnitude more useful.

I worry that ripping off the crust and barnacles from legacy OSes like Android and iOS and slapping them on Windows Phone will hurt usability.

A properly configured live tile set up is of course, wonderful and very helpful. However, what happens when you are not on your home screen, are in the middle of working on a document, using an app, playing a game, etc? Those live tiles are not as helpful when you cannot see them. Something to pull down so that you can peek at what your notifications are, decide whether or not they need to be addressed right then or if they can wait, would be a helpful thing, particularly if Windows Phone is going to be marketed aggressively to the business world.

I understand your concern. My response would be for Microsoft to find a way to do it that is not dated and "crusty"'. That's way they make the big bucks.

 

[jwinch2]

You didn't read the OP. That idea has already been mentioned in this thread anyway. But that is not what the OP is asking for.

The OP's point is that we should be able to access our notification centre WITHOUT LEAVING AN APP. Android and iOS can manage this.

Having a notification centre on either the lock screen or the home screen is awkward. So I'm in the middle of an app, and I have to press the Lock button to turn the screen off, then press it again to turn the screen back on, then swipe to the left? Awful. And having it on the home screen is not much better.

One workaround would be to have an extra button on the little volume/music controls popup. So whenever you press the volume button you get the option to check your notifications by just tapping the icon. Then the volume box could just expand and show notifications. (The major downside to this is that using the volume buttons to get to your notification centre is a ridiculously unintuitive and clunky compromise.)

I believe BB10 has the feature that you can access your notification center from any app at any time thought a swipe to the left. Since everything is going the route of gestures rather than buttons, is there any reason, other than it would stolen from RIM, why something like that wouldn't work for WP? Look at the 40 second mark on this video to see what I mean: BlackBerry 10 Sneak Peek: Mobile Has a Brand New Flow - YouTube!

Please understand that I am not saying it would need to look exactly like this, but it does give an idea of how accessing a notification center from within an app would work. I am sure the brain trust at Microsoft could come up with something simple yet unique to make this happen.

 

[Rioghalmo]

double tapping on the windows button on wp8 doesnt seem to do anything like it does on android, maybe they could make this a way to activate a notification list/center.

 

[tamm0r]

Personally I like the idea of accessing the notification centre by swiping to the left on the home screen. But I also appreciate the idea to access it from within any application (there are enough reasons why one might want to do this).

My preferred approach would be to reassign the hardware buttons so you can access it from the home screen (swipe left) _and_ from within an application.

 

[jwinch2]

Personally I like the idea of accessing the notification centre by swiping to the left on the home screen. But I also appreciate the idea to access it from within any application (there are enough reasons why one might want to do this).

My preferred approach would be to reassign the hardware buttons so you can access it from the home screen (swipe left) _and_ from within an application.

Agreed. I don't see any reason why that could not work easily, both from the home screen and within an app.