Analysis of Android 4.0 Notification System (1)

The notification system on the mobile phone can send important messages to users. A well-designed message reminder mechanism is required for smooth, comfortable, and friendly applications. However, not all notifications are intended to be viewed by users. Otherwise, they will only cause harassment to users. Therefore, use the notifications with caution.

During the translation of Android Design, we found that the Android system has provided some Design suggestions on notification messages, so we will share them with you here.

1. When to use notifications?

Notifications are mainly used for Time-Sensitive events, especially synchronization events involving others (Involve another person. For example, the following Gtalk and calendar notifications are time-sensitive and human-related events.

So when should I not use notifications? Official suggestions:

Information that is not directly targeted at users or is not urgent. For example, there is nothing new in SNS that is directly related to users. Path may make this mistake.

You do not need to create a notification for information that is displayed on the current screen. That is, when you are chatting, you do not have to create notifications about chat messages.

The system can perform simple operations by itself without user operations, such as saving, synchronizing, or updating applications.

If an error occurs, but the application can quickly restore itself, you do not have to interrupt the user with a notification, or even let the user know the error.

You do not need to use notifications for services that cannot be started or stopped manually.

Do not create unnecessary notifications to make users have a deep understanding of your brand. Otherwise, they will only dislike your brand. The best way to keep users focused on your applications and provide a small amount of content is to provide widgets to users so that they can put them on the homepage.

2. Notification Design Guide

1. Private it

Notifications sent by other users should include the user's profile picture (Icon/Photo) in the notification, as well as the Title and Message content of the notification) timestamp, and the application Icon (Secondary Icon ).

2. Merge similar notifications

If an application sends multiple notifications of the same type and these notifications are not processed (the processed notifications are removed from the notification drawer ), merge notifications of the same type into one.

The merged notification will have a summative description, and let the user know the total Number of notifications merged (Number Pending ).

3. timestamp of time-sensitive events

By default, system notifications are timestamped in the upper-right corner of the notification. If you think that displaying a timestamp is meaningless to your notification, you may have to reconsider whether it is worthwhile to create a notification for this message. If this notification is really important enough, decide whether or not to display the timestamp.

Common notifications that require timestamp display are communication notifications, such as Email, SMS, and chat messages. You need to understand the context of a message through timestamps.

4. navigation mechanism related to notifications

If you click a notification, you should open the relevant application to the status where you can perform operations on the content mentioned in the notification. However, if you click a merged notification, you should go to the List page (the previous level on the Content Page). The third part will elaborate on it in detail.

5. Self-Cleaning

Some notifications will show related information and prompts at a certain time point. However, after that time point, this notification may not be important to users, in this case, you should consider automatically deleting this notification.

Similarly, the chat messages or emails you have viewed should also be removed without manual operations.

6. Provide a preview for the notification

A short text is provided as a notification preview to give you a general understanding of the notification content and help you decide whether to view the notification immediately.

7. Let the user decide whether to display the notification

The user may be bored with frequent notifications, so the user should decide whether to display the notification. Therefore, you should be able to cancel the notification in application settings.

8. Use different icons

In order to give users a glance in the notification bar to know which application sends the notification, they should adopt their own distinctive icons. Therefore, when designing the application icons, you should note the obvious differences with the notification icons of other Android applications.

However, you must note that do not use colors to distinguish between them, because the notification icons are usually black and white.