I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand waking up to an iPhone lock screen with an endlessly scrollable list of notifications that I can barely focus on. More than 50 unread email notifications from Mailbox… weather updates from Dark Sky… a dozen unread iMessages… updates from social networks… reminders… it’s all quite overbearing, and I often wish that Apple would clean things up a bit.
Now, a new reimagining of the iPhone lock screen created by a former Apple designer envisions a gorgeous new interface you really have to check out.
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Speaking of inbox notifications, I woke up this morning to a great email sent in by a reader who happened upon a post on Dribbble by Louie Mantia. Mantia worked as a designer at Apple on the iTunes design team until he left the company in 2011.
Rather than spending your first waking moments each day scrolling through notifications, Mantia envisions a lock screen that doesn’t just have a simplified interface, but also takes cues from Apple’s new proactive Siri features.
I wrote about Siri’s new proactive suggestions in a recent article where I questioned why I still bother to carry an Android phone in addition to my iPhone. In a nutshell, the new version of Siri coming out in iOS 9 is more like Google Now, offering you suggestions and information without needing to ask for it.
Here’s Mantia’s example:
First of all, it looks great. This lock screen is far simpler and more stylish than the actual lock screen on Apple’s iPhone. But beyond that, it’s also proactive, offering you a glimpse at the day’s weather so you can plan out your morning more easily. In theory, the lock screen would be situational, offering different views at different times of the day, or in different locations.
Finally, Mantia’s reinvented lock screen does away with the massive scrolling list of notifications users like me have to deal with each morning. Instead, notifications are gathered and grouped by app, represented by icons the user can tap to expand.
The bad news is that Apple may never recreate the iPhone’s lock screen using a smart and simple interface like this one. If we’re lucky, however, the jailbreak community might already be hard at work trying to turn Mantia’s vision into a reality.
