- Top Level views
- The layout should be an equally rewarding experience for new and frequent visitors alike.
"What are my typical users most likely going to want to do in my app?" - Put content forward: Choose layouts that are visually engaging and appropriate for the data type and screen size.
- Set up action bars for consistent navigation and actions:
- Use the action bar to display your app's icon or title
- Navigation supports switching multiple views
- Fixed tabs: views switching frequently, limited numbers, aware of the alternate views
- Spinners (drop-down menu): views switching between the same data set or those of the same type
- Navigation drawers (slide-out menu): suitable for complex apps, a large number of top-level views, direct access
- Consider making the content creation accessible right from the top level.
- Include the Search action in the action bar
- The layout should be an equally rewarding experience for new and frequent visitors alike.
- Categories views
- Use tabs to combine category selection and data display: Scrolling tabs for closely related data, but no more than 5-7 tabs; fixed tabs for unrelated data.
- Allow cutting through hierarchies
- Acting upon multiple data items
- Detail/edit view
- Make navigation between detail views efficient, e.g. swipe views, thumbnail view controls
Checklist
- Find ways to display useful content on your start screen.
- Use action bars to provide consistent navigation.
- Keep your hierarchies shallow by using horizontal navigation and shortcuts.
- Use multi-select to allow the user to act on collections of data.
- Allow for quick navigation between detail items with swipe views.
