Android Application design: Options Menu

Article Description: Android Hardware key interaction "option Menu".

It is well known that Android has no clear guideline, although there is no strict specification to limit design and innovation, but it also leads to confusion on the design of Android apps in the marketplace. A typical example is the options menu .

Messy Menu

The Android machine uses the hardware keys to exhale the menu, which, in a way that is implicit, is not predictive of what kind of menu the user can exhale, or even whether the menu can be paged out.

How to Solve

To reduce the user's cognitive costs, it is recommended that the design follow the following methods.

Question 1 : What happens when the menu is exhaled

When users are in a single task scene (such as filling in information, and when operating at the pop-up level), the Mask menu key is exhaled.
PS: Users in a single task scene, to guide the user to focus on completing the current operation for the above, a road, fork more users easily lost.
In principle, in addition to the other Windows under the Hardware menu should be called out the corresponding menu.

How to correspond? Please look down.

Question 2 : What menu to call out

1, the General window under the Hardware menu button Unified exhaled system menu (system basic functions Standard "settings" and "exit") other functions can be based on the specific circumstances of the app.
The system menu style generally takes up most of the app's exhalation menu.

2, the specific scene (user rights decision), the menu can be customized (such as "delete" "sharing" functions) can be based on the specific circumstances of the app.

The sound design Options menu's exhalation and menu entries can help users understand and easily use your application.