Design Brief: What’s New / Release Notes

What this is

Two related surfaces, not one component:

  1. Triggered card — appears once after an app update, summarizing what changed. Transient, dismissible, non-blocking.
  2. Settings history screen — a permanent, always-available list of past release highlights, newest first. Reference material, not a moment.

Content shape (per version entry)

  • Version label (e.g., “1.5.0”) — not shown to the user verbatim as a version number necessarily; open to a friendlier framing (“Latest update,” a date, etc.) if that reads better than raw semver
  • 2–5 short bullets per version, each roughly a sentence, plain language
  • Example bullet tone: “You can now track your seed packets — viability, quantity, and where they’re stored.” Not: “Added Seed Inventory module (M8).”

States to design (all three, not just the clean one)

  1. Single version, few bullets (2–3) — the common case
  2. Combined multiple versions in one card — a user who skipped several releases sees more than one version’s bullets grouped together in a single card; needs a way to visually separate the groups without feeling like a changelog wall of text
  3. Settings history, long list — uncapped, uses real space over time; needs to hold up as a scrollable list of many entries, each with its own bullet group, without becoming visually heavy

Interaction constraints

  • One-tap dismiss on the triggered card, no confirmation step
  • Must never block or delay reaching the Plants tab — appears after initial load, not as a launch gate
  • Reachable one-handed, mobile-first, iPhone only
  • No badges, no unread dots, no urgency cues — this is informational, not a nudge to re-engage
  • Support light and dark mode
  • VoiceOver: dismiss control needs a clear accessible label (not just an icon-only “x”)

Consistency

  • Look at the FAB popup menu pattern already shipped for Seed Inventory (Plants tab) before proposing a new interaction idiom — reuse an existing pattern where it fits rather than introducing another one
  • Settings row should look like a normal, unremarkable settings list item — this isn’t a feature to visually promote

Out of scope for this pass

  • Icons or illustrations per bullet (keep it text-only unless a strong case emerges)
  • Any animation beyond a standard sheet/card presentation