Windows 8: Notification overload

I aired this thought online this morning thinking it was innocent enough and that most people would agree with the fact that on Windows 8, it’s pretty hard to see notifications that have happened in the past.

I was wrong. It seems the common feeling of most out there right now is that ‘Live Tiles’ on Windows 8 are enough, and that they provide enough information at a glance to quickly be informed on what’s going on, but I disagree. They have a number of large flaws that are being overlooked.

Live tiles are a great system in many ways, and Windows Phone has been extremely effective at demonstrating this, but they have major issues with scaling, both in their sheer numbers and when a large number of notifications come in.

I found this particularly frustrating when Windows Phone first launched. I would often find that when a deluge of information is sent to the phone – such as a Facebook status update with a large amount of comments, or multiple text messages – the tile couldn’t present it in a way that reflected the history (how old they were) nor could it differentiate different actions other than just displaying a number. Even worse, there are so many different places to check for different actions, the “Me” tile for Facebook/Twitter, Messages for SMS, individual application notifications and more.

Windows 8 suffers from the same problem. Maybe you’ve been having a conversation on Windows Live Messenger (why isn’t there Skype support yet?) with two or three different people through the Messaging hub and you walk away and come back in three hours. You have 10 messages waiting, but you don’t have time to read them over right now. With Windows 8, you have to wait for the tile to flick through each and every one. If it had a notification centre, you could pull it up, skim over the separate messages and carry on with your day.

This leads me to my next point. What if, while you were away, you received 10 new IM’s, three new emails, one Facebook message and two game notifications. You get back to your PC, and you have to open each application one by one to go over the notifications and clear them. You could skim them without opening, but those notifications stay unread in that state. But what if you have 50 applications? Or 100? I’m sure over time – just like any PC – users will experience application overload. Then, it’s actually a mundane and frustrating task having to scroll and actually actively look for what’s happened since you’ve been away.

Similarly, another issue caused by the lack of an aggregated place for notifications is when users do get application overload, or choose to unpin applications, how do they receive alerts? My guess is as good as yours, but as it stands, they disappear into the abyss as soon as the alert slides off the side of the screen.

I really don’t think there’s an excuse to not have one anymore. Users shouldn’t have to work to find out what’s been happening in their world, and Windows Phone’s motto was always ‘Glance and Go,’ so how about we add some functionality that lets us do that in more complex situations?

It’s obviously far too late now, since Windows 8 hits the corporate ‘street’ on Monday, but maybe it should be added, before we all get overload.