The use of portable electronic devices has increased significantly in recent years, with many applications typically residing in the memory of such devices. Exemplary applications include messaging applications, calendar applications and social media applications. Electronic devices often receive communications for these applications, which contain information of importance to users. These electronic devices then often provide notifications that correspond to the received communications.
Exemplary communications include instant messages, calendar invitations, social media updates, microblog posts and news stories. Exemplary notifications associated with these communications may include digital images, video, text, icons, control elements (such as buttons) and/or other graphics to notify users of the receipt of these communications. Exemplary applications receiving communications and generating notifications include instant messaging applications (e.g., iMessage from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), calendar applications (e.g., iCal or Calendar from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), social networking applications, microblogging applications, and news applications.
But user interfaces for accessing notifications, and methods of navigating to and from such interfaces, are cumbersome and inefficient. For example, the notifications may be displayed in a confusing manner, and navigation to and from interfaces that contain notifications may also be confusing. These methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.