Should an app remember its last state after re-opening from background by push notification?

Question

Imagine this scenario:

There's a mobile app. The user navigates between different app pages. The last page the user visits is the Edit profile form. Then the user goes to the iPhone home screen, which sends the app to the background. While the app is running in the background, the user gets a push notification from the app. Pressing the notification bar re-opens the app on the Notifications screen.

Here's the question:

Should the app remember its last state - the Edit profile form - and provide a possibility to go back from Notifications to Edit profile?

Answer 1

If the user is leaving the app, typically when they return to the app, they will land on the screen they were last on.

However, if the user has left the app and has tapped on an app push notification from their home/lock screen, the expectation is they will be brought back to the app to the page/activity related to the notification if not the same page they left.

Answer 2

This is my analysis:

1. If returning to the app from the notification alert goes directly to the notification page, there should an alert in the app indicating the user has a pending task
2. If returning to the app from the notification alert goes to the page the user was working on, there should be an alert indicating the user has a new notification

From these two options, the second in my opinion is more logical.

• It's much more common in many apps to get or see a notification alert than a pending task alert.
• A pending task can be sporadic, while notifications are usually more frequent

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