One of the interesting features that were released as part of Android 3.0 HoneyComb release back in 2011 was the introduction to the soft navigation buttons. To me, the system seemed full of potential as navigation buttons adapted to better educate the user as the user used the system. For example, while using an application, if the user ended up launching the keyboard, the back button would change to indicate that back would now just dismiss the keyboard and not actually go back to the previous screen.

Three years later, I am surprised that not much else was added. The back navigation while powerful still can get ambiguous at times. Below are a couple of ideas I think can really improve the user experience on Android today.

Preventing accidental over-backing

Accidentally hitting back one too many times is a problem that I encounter enough times that it really does get irritating. I am sure it happens to other app developers as well, which is why often you see developers implementing the extremely frowned upon “Are you sure you want to exit” modal alert in apps.

The soft button could really fix this problem by changing itself to indicate that you are at the last item in a stack. I am not an icon designer but here is how I imagine the soft keys changing when the user is on the only activity in the stack. The icon clarifies that hitting that button will exit the activity.

Enabling Done Discard Pattern

The constant presence of a back button causes confusion in one other place: when a user is modifying data, like adding a todo item on a list or adding a new contact. Without an explicit tap on a save button, hitting back or tapping on the Home icon now adds ambiguity to the question of whether the user wanted to save the data or not. One of the nicer patterns that emerged in Android was the Done/Discard pattern that Roman Nurik released as an Android library a while back, but because it doesn’t prevent the back button, a better way was if Android introduced a “Done Discard Activity” that would modify the back button and maybe temporarily hide the multitasking action.

What do you think? How else could the the digital nature of the Android navigation bar be used to improve Android UX?

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