I recently came across an article about changes to KaiOS's push notifications, or as they call it, notices. Some of these changes are amazing.

One change I really like is that the lock screen summary actually shows which application a notice came from, instead of some vague generic icon. This is especially great for notices from apps unknown to KaiOS, as these apps will just be grouped to a super generic (...) icon.

Another change I like is the small red dot that appears next to the "Notices" action on the homescreen, and on application icons on the top right (like on smartphones!!!).

However, there are some changes I dislike.

One change I really dislike is the "nudges." Basically, if you don't check your notices after a while, a popup message (like a window.alert) will show up, telling you to check your notices. I see this problem with download notifications. I download many things onto my phone, and I almost never check the "Download Complete" notice. It would be pretty annoying to be reminded to check for something "important," only for it to be a "Download Complete" notice from ten days ago. Also, just personally, I just don't like having these reminders. Hopefully, this can be turned off in the settings.

Another thing I really dislike is the new design of the statusbar icon for notices. The current version looks pretty nice; a squircle with the number of notices in it and a dot in the top left.

It looks pretty nice in the statusbar, it blends in nicely with the design of the other icons.

Here is the new version. It's a speech/text bubble like icon, that fills with color when you have a new notification. Looks pretty nice by itself.

In the statusbar, however, it doesn't look nice at all. While it does indeed serve it's purpose (to nudge users to look at their notices more), it looks very bad in the statusbar. It clashes with the design of the other icons. One example of this is the battery icon. The border of the notice icon is very thick, unlike the battery icon's thin border. Another example is the font, which is also thicker. I didn't show it in the example I made, however in the screenshots in their article, the font is noticably thicker.

The worst part is the color change when there is a new notice.

Once again, yes, it does serve it's purpose, but it looks... really, really bad. Nothing else has color, so why should the notice icon have some? It's very distracting and looks very very out of place.

Instead of that redesign, I'd like to propose a simple change to the current design.

There! Pretty simple. Keep the nice old design with one small change.

And if color is really needed, then just add the color to the dot!


It doesn't look out of place, and it's not too distracting. Actually, this little (red) dot might be more noticable, because it's such a small detail that users might want to get rid of the small dot to get back the perfect squircle!

Anyway, that's all. This is just my opinion, so they don't have to change it. I would really like it if they would though!

Thanks for reading.