Notion — App Review by Sven Voskamp
Notion is a productivity app made by the startup Notion Labs Inc based in San Fransisco. You can use Notion on the web, desktop (Windows & Mac), tablet (Android & iOS) and mobile (Android & iOS). For this review I will discuss the mobile iOS version of Notion.
The core functionality of Notion is that you can store a lot of information in this application. From obviously notes to a fully elaborated agenda and from a little to-do list to a complex roadmap. Notion is really comprehensive and complete. But in all these endless possibilities, there also lurks some danger.
Below are my design details in Notion for iOS.
Launch
The launch of Notion is pretty basic. The logo of Notion shows up and after a few seconds you are in the sign in section. The sign in section of Notion is very clear. There are three different options to sign in. You can sign in through Gmail, normal email or SAML SSO (Single Sign On).
Workspace
After you’ve signed in, you can set up a workspace. You can make this one for yourself or for a team. After you select one of these options, you will get the question how you will use this space. You can select one of the different topics like Design, Education, Engineering, etc. Notions asks this so they can set up the right starter templates for the workspace.
Onboarding
After you’ve filled in the details for your workspace Notion will give you some “essential” tips. It will tell you more about re-orderering content, the sidebar, the other devices where notion is available to use and how to save webpages and local files. These tips are nice to know, but some are pretty straight-forward. If you look at the complexicty of Notion, it would have been better to get a quick introduction in the endless possibilities of Notion. The power of Notion lays in all these endless possibiliets to store data and information, but Notions lacks to give new users the real essential tips on how to use the application to the fullest.
Navigation
Like I said in the last alinea, the power of Notions lays in the endless possibilities to store data & information. Notion found a pretty nice way to keep it organized. If you click on the navigation tab you will get an overview of all your pages. Some pages have nested pages inside them. If you click on a specific page, you will see the nested pages inside the main page. Therefore, the navigation of Notion is really nice to work with, especially if you have some really complex pages.
Pages
If you want to add a new page on Notion, you can simply tap the “Add a page” tab in the navigation menu. You will get redirected to a new page where Notion gives you an option to make an empty page or a page with an icon. The first time I saw this option I thought there would be a big difference between these two options. But there is not much of big difference. The empty page is just a blank page and the page with an icon is also a blank page, but with a random icon on it. I don’t understand why Notion made it like this. On the top of the page you have an option to add a icon to the page if you want, so to give the user a choice to chose between a blank page and a blank page with an icon is really unnecesary.
As for the rest, you can customize your page the way you want to. You can select a different cover. You can also select a template for your page, I will discuss templates in the next alinea.
Templates
If you make a new page on Notion, Notion can provide a template for the page. For example, I wanted to plan a roadtrip through Marocco with some friends. When I made a new page I could choose the template “Travel Planner” which provided me a schedule, a map and contacts. There are a lot of templates available, so there is probably always one template that will fullfill your needs. These templates are really handy, because you’ve got a quick headstart and can fully customize this template to your own hands.
Databases
Databases are the reason why Notion stands out if you compare it to other productivity applications. Databases are pieces of information that you can put in your pages. For example, if you want to plan a design task, you can create a kanban board. If you want to organize your finances, you can create a table. The possibilities are endless. The downfall of this is that you can get really lost in all what Notion has to offer. Futhermore, if you create a database, Notion doesn’t give you any instructions on how to use it. It gives you the right tools, but doesn’t tell you what to do with it, so there is some knowlegde of the specific database required.
Embeds
Notion does a pretty good job here. It is possible to embed external media like Tweets, Google Maps, a Figma file and much more to your page. What makes this feature so nice is that it is really easy to import these files. You just need an URL and it embeds your external media into your page.
Conclusion
The Notion team did a really neat job in making this application work on mobile. The possibility to share a workspace with a team, when for example you are working on a big design task, can be a really big plus. I can also appreciate the completeness of Notion. There are so many options to document your pages. Almost everything is possible, especially with the option to embed your external media and the wide range of databases. But how good all these possibilites seem to be, there is a big disadvantage lying in it. There is some knowlegde required with the databases to make it work and all the options and possibilities can make it feel like a maze for new users. It just takes time to understand all what Notion has to offer and if you do understand, Notion is probably the most complete productivity app there is, but if you just want to make a quick to do list, the standard Notes app from Apple will do the job.
