Smashing Android UI

Chapter 19: Navigation and Layout Design Patterns

Navigation and layout design patterns help you display information on-screen in a way that’s intuitive, familiar, and easy for users to learn and use. These patterns help you arrange information based on how it’s related to other information. The layout design patterns discussed in this chapter include the following:

• Stacked galleries

• Dashboards

• Workspaces

• Split view

• The Expand-in-Context pattern

• Side navigation

Using Stacked Galleries

A stacked gallery provides you with a way to present multiple sources of independent information on the same screen while giving users an easy way to navigate through any one of them.

Problems addressed

Apps that aggregate data from multiple sources or apps that contain multiple categories of information often require that users navigate between views to get an overview of the content in each category or source. If the content is separated on different screens, it takes users much longer to navigate through them.

Solution

By presenting stream or category content in independently scrolling gallery components, an app can offer users a compromise between the amount of information shown from each stream and an overview of all the content. The Pulse app is a good example of using stacked galleries to show user streams. Figure 19-1 illustrates how the categories can be separately scrolled with a horizontal drag gesture. Only one of the categories scrolls horizontally a time. This allows users ...