Question

I am switching my Android app over to a more “proper” UX with the ActionBar etc. I have been trying to determine what the best/recommended navigation style would be.

My app has 5 activities that I currently switch between by using the menu/overflow menu.

My app has 1 main home screen that the user will spend most of their time on. The user needs a way to navigate to the other activities but none of them are really related to eachother. They are more like utility screens that a user will go to when they need to do some maintenance.

I am reading this link: http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/actionbar.html

I was first thinking to use an action bar dropdown navigation but that seems like it’s not designed for navigation and more so for switching between views of the same data:

Use a spinner in the main action bar if:

You don't want to give up the vertical screen real estate for a dedicated tab bar.
The user is switching between views of the same data set (for example: calendar events   viewed by day, week, or month) or data sets of the same type (such as content for two different accounts).

Then I was going to use ActionBar tabs but it says that is more for swiping between items that are used often:

Use tabs if:

You expect your app's users to switch views frequently.
You want the user to be highly aware of the alternate views.

I guess the last option is to put the actions into the overflow menu but this seems like i’m going backwards.

Can anyone offer some insight?

Thanks

Answer 1

I have decided to go with a side drawer as per here:
http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/actionbar.html

Open a drawer from the main action bar if:

You want to provide direct navigation to a number of views within your app which don't have direct relationships between each other.