Thursday, January 23, 2014

UI design

I have an interesting UI design issue. In a project in which we develop an Android app, we were discussing the behavior of the back button.

The app has tabs in the actionbar. The behavior of the back button currently is to leave the app, independent of the tab you have pressed. My idea on the back button is that it should take you back to the home tab, then when you press it again, you leave the app. If in one of the tabs you have pressed a button or a list item which brings you deeper into the app, the back behavior should be as follows: first press brings you to the default page of the tab you have selected, next press brings you to the default page in the home tab (or whichever tab is selected when you enter the app), third press makes you leave the app.

In another project, we had to different landing pages, depending on the preferences of the user. I made it so that the back button brings you back to the landing page that is in your preferences, or the landing page that you have selected when you entered the app. I feel that this is the most intuitive behavior of the back button, even if, as a developer said, the button is not stricly bringing you "back".

No comments: