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New concept images for iOS 11 reimagines Apple’s notifications as ‘Smart Notifications’

You may think the whole world has gone smart mad – smart home, smart watch, and of course the more familiar smart phone. However, a new visual concept of what Apple might announce in June when it unveils iOS 11, envisions a much smarter use of notifications on the iPhone.

In iOS 10, Apple added more functionality to notifications, including opening up some tools to third-parties, allowing the likes of Uber to show map information within the notifications. However, in iOS 11, writer Matt Birchler has gone a number of steps further in customization, which can be seen in the images below.

Though the images feature and iPhone, as it shares an operating system with an iPad, it’s likely it’d look much the same on Apple’s larger devices.

Read more: A guide to all the notifications updates in iOS 10

Smart notifications

This first concept image shows what it might look like on iOS if notifications of the same type are grouped together. For example, if you receive a number of text messages, they could be condensed and housed within the same notification. Neat.

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In another, he goes even further, referring to the image as a portrayal of Smart Notifications. The example shows popular calendar app Fantastical, which appears based on location and time, but also provides transit information via Apple Maps. It’s not that far beyond the capability of Fantastical now, so the idea isn’t too far-fetched.

To go one step further, a smart notification like this could inform a user if there was an accident, or traffic is particularly bad in order to alert them that they should leave the house a little earlier.

Weather access

Elsewhere, Birchler looks at an easy way to get glanceable weather information – by adding it directly to the Home screen. The ability to Raise to Wake your iPhone and easily see the current conditions without having to interact further with the app certainly appeals to us.

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He then goes on to explore the possibilities of including something similar to Siri’s Suggestions for which apps to open – but directly on the Home screen. These could also be customized by the user. It would allow users to head straight to an app from the Lock screen.

Guide: Master Spotlight and Siri suggestions 

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The concept images are fairly straight-forward and imagine some simple and very achievable changes. For some more drastic visions of iOS 11 – check out these recent concepts which show what a Dark Mode might look like.

For more of Birchler’s images, and to read his thoughts on the predictive redesign, read the full blog post.