Few days back, I read an article on Android UI Patterns by Juhani discussing about the emerging Side Navigation UI Pattern on Android, and it is a pretty interesting topic. This new unofficial (yet?) building block for Android starting to make its way into more apps in the market, including Google+ official Android app. This Side Navigation (I will just stick with this term used by Juhani since there isn’t any official term for it yet) UI Pattern is an interesting design, especially on the phone that has smaller screen estate compared to tablet, but it can end up confuses, or even frustrates the user if it doesn’t get implemented in an elegant way, resulting in bad user experience for the entire app.

Inspired by iOS?

The official Facebook Android app has been using the Side Navigation pattern for quite some time, and that was my first experience with this new UI pattern. Well, I never been a fan of this app because it brought over too much iOS designs and patterns into it (it’s a direct porting), and this Side Navigation pattern is actually part of the bad porting. I always think that it’ll be great for all Android users if Facebook can re-design the app with Android ICS UI/UX, so I went ahead and made a very simple mockup of new design without the Side Navigation and personally I think it’s looking good with better Android experience. Continue reading →