A motion tweak for iOS 11’s Cover Sheet
In iOS 10 notifications are listed on the lock screen as well as in the notification center that you swipe down from the top edge.
In iOS 11 Apple tried to unify these two views by adopting the lock screen design for both. What you now drag from the top is called the Cover Sheet, basically a ‘non locking’ version of the lock screen.

With the existing design (mocked up above), you drag the view as a single, static piece. For those of us who have few notifications, it often feels like dragging an empty thing, which may be frustrating.
A motion tweak
The mockup below explores how the interaction could be made more engaging and possibly more useful at the same time. As you begin to drag, the status bar’s time label dramatically inflates until it becomes the massive, familiar one of the Cover Sheet. This unifies the UI further, and makes it more playful and dynamic.

The concept plays with the idea that the Cover Sheet is basically the expanded state of the status bar.
Since the Cover Sheet has the same design as the lock screen, some users (like me!) may first assume that by pulling down the sheet they’re locking the device. That’s not the case. Because the redesign feels less static, with the content now floating, it may help reduce the risk of confusion.
More importantly, the proposed tweak makes it convenient to glance at time and date, typically in situations where status bar’s information is hard to read (bad light, poor contrast, tired eyes) or simply not shown. With the current iOS 11 implementation, in order to see a comfortable time label you have to either pull down the Cover Sheet entirely, or go to the lock screen, by pressing the Power key twice for instance. Both methods feel more distracting and effortful.
In iOS 11, on iPad, there’s a brilliant improvement that is based on the same idea that certain functions should be accessible without disrupting the user’s flow: swipe up just a bit from the bottom edge and the app dock immediately pops up, without obstructing the current app. You get more if you continue swiping all the way up, but often you don’t need more. It’s the idea of progressive disclosure, but gesture-driven, continuous, as opposed to the usual all-or-nothing, expanded-or-collapsed approach.
Notes
How would notifications be displayed with that concept? I haven’t explored yet. But following the same unfolding logic, we can imagine that the top of the notification stack would appear first; a good thing as it means the most recent notification would show first. An additional benefit over the original design?
The mockups in this post were made quickly, using Principle for Mac. The actual iOS 11 implementation uses complex blur transitions that I happily skipped.
