Sorry for the long comment. TL;DR: this is a symptom of a larger problem around how we use notifications. I really don't like how notifications are used in gen

Sorry for the long comment. TL;DR: this is a symptom of a larger problem around how we use notifications. I really don't like how notifications are used in general. They are a ui tool that we would ideally use to interrupt ourselves when it's truly necessary, but that's almost never the case[1]. When your screen is on, it's usually because you're doing something with your phone. If a notification comes in during this time, it shouldn't be able to disrupt your workflow unless you opt into that disruption. I love the idea of using the status bar to give a heads up that there's a new notification in the app. It's already used to provide a "back" button when you've opted to open an app from a notification (which, granted, was a controversial UI decision), so there is some precedent for it. Generally though, most apps send you notifications when you don't need them. I'd argue that users wouldn't hate being taken away from what they were doing as much if it took them to something both time-sensitive and actionable. Notifications should be originate from a user's interactions (whether the active user, like when setting reminders, or other users, like when sending messages), and even then they should be used carefully. In the article, the screenshot shows the user getting a notification about a promotional email. There's almost never a scenario in which a user couldn't have waited until later to read that promotion. I love that the Gmail app gives you the option to only get notified for new emails in your inbox; that's a great first step. Things like group chats are still pretty broken (you want to know when there's unread messages in a chat, not every time someone in the group sends a message). [1]: http://trydesignlab.com/blog/are-notifications-a-dark-pattern-ux-ui/ http://trydesignlab.com/blog/are-notifications-a-dark-patter...