Regarding simplifying the UI for me:
- “Normal” doesn’t tell me anything as a user, I don’t think it should exist.
- The large amount of text detailing tracking in the UI currently complicates it, you have to read quite a lot to work out which one you want. The textual descriptions of “Tracking” and “Watching” are very similar.
I believe that the option to “Get Notifications” should be separate and only shown when “Tracking” the topic.
This simplifies the need to add so much text to the menu, but still very clearly understand when you will get notifications.
Here is a screen grab of mock-up of possible replacement in different states:
And the menu contents:
Here is the CodePen: http://codepen.io/DeanMarkTaylor/pen/bpqwOj
This could be completed with purely UI changes, there is no need to change the underlying system functionality.