The droid application I’m currently working on is getting quite large -> many Activities. I’m concerned about the way I should design the navigation in this app.
I have a main menu Activity, which should be the only entry point to the app. If the user start from here, he/she can go quite deep, through many Activities. However, there are Activities that should be accessed by traversing multiple paths, not just 1, from the MainMenu.
By a simple example: let’s say the user has a profile, which he/she can view and edit, and can also view other users profile with this Activity. The app also has a forum-like feature. These can normally be accessed from the menu like this:
Menu -> Social Menu -> Forums -> List of posts of a selected forum.
Menu -> About Me -> Profile.
The question: The user’s just clicked on the avatar of a forum post’s author, so I’ve displayed that users Profile page. Now, when the user clicks on the Back button, should I take him back to the “Forums”, or back to the “About Me” menu?
Since this is a UX issue, the best way to find the best solution is usability testing.
However, If I had to hazard a guess as to what would make the best user experience, I would rely on the principle of least astonishment for scenario. As a user, I expect the back button to take me back. So if I arrive at the “Profile” page from a “Forum” I’d expect to go back to the Forum. If I arrived from a different activity, I’d expect to go back to that activity.