Windows 10 Redstone: Card UI coming to Action Center and Cortana

Microsoft is about to bring interactive cards to the Action Center and Cortana in Windows 10 Redstone, sources familiar with the matter say. No longer will the Action Center or Cortana offer static information, instead there will be a new UI internally called “Cards” that will portray information and share said information between both areas of the system.

Internal concept art showcase what Microsoft has in mind for these new Card designs, bringing a sleek and modern interface to the Action Center. It is understood that these new Card user-interfaces will appear in Cortana too, creating a sense of familiarity between both the Action Center and Cortana.

The goal here is that more areas of the system will share a common set of shared actions that can be accessed in more ways than one. Cortana will talk to the Action Center more and vice-versa, offering personalized content cards meaning you’ll never miss an appointment or notification.

Sources also say Microsoft is toying with bringing filters to the Action Center, which would give the user a choice between notifications filtered by insights, for example. This would allow notifications to be grouped under certain app types, making it easy to organize what notifications you want to see. A good example of this would be with Social apps like Twitter and Facebook, the Action Center can group all those notifications under one header, and the user can filter the action center to Social apps only.

1st and 3rd party apps will be able to tap into the Card UI, offering their own information and actions based on each individual app. For example, the Calendar app will be able to pin birthday reminder cards to the Action Center so you never forget, or another Card can be showcased that detail your meetings for the day, and give you options for rescheduling two meetings that clash.

All the images seen in this article are internal design concepts, meaning it is likely these will look different when they are finally unveiled officially. Hopefully, Microsoft will unveil these changes tomorrow at BUILD, but there is always the possibility that these features could be scheduled for Redstone 2 instead. At any rate, we’re excited to see Microsoft working on additional changes to the Action Center and Cortana, and can’t wait to try them out.