Enhancing Navigation: Transitioning to Bottom Navigation View

[alperozturk96]

Why?

Currently, the Android app uses a Navigation Drawer. We are planning to add Bottom Navigation View to improve user experience. After introducing the Bottom Navigation View, the UI appears inconsistent. Having two navigation solutions in Android creates redundancy and could be optimized for a better experience.

It’s important for the Files application to provide a consistent behavior, flow, and UI/UX across platforms unless platform-specific restrictions apply. Currently, iOS and Android differ significantly in screen flow, design, behavior, and error messages. iOS adopts Bottom Navigation, which is more natural for that project. While Android initially chose the Navigation Drawer, transitioning to Bottom Navigation could unify and enhance the user experience.

For example, in the current Navigation Drawer, items such as “Personal Files,” “Favorites,” “On Device,” and “Shared” are unnecessary. These items are merely filters for “All Files". Instead of representing them as separate items in the drawer, they can be relocated to a filter button in the top-right corner. When clicked, this button will display a native alert dialog, allowing users to apply the same filters.

And these items also can be removed from the drawer menu “Community”, “Settings”, “Activities", "Deleted Files", "Uploads"

How?

The Drawer Menu and Notification Bell icon will be removed from the search bar.

Filter Button: Clicking this button will open a native alert dialog to filter files. Options include:
• Personal Files
• Favorites
• On Device
• Shared
• Deleted Files

Sort Button: Clicking this button will open a native alert dialog to sort files. Options include:
• A to Z
• Z to A
• Newest
• (Additional sorting options ...)

Profile Icon: Clicking the profile icon will open a native alert dialog with the following options:
Add Account
Manage Account
Notifications
Settings

Settings Screen: The new settings screen will include:
General Tab: Activities
Sync Tab: Uploads
More Tab: Community, Talk, More

Comparison

@Hyeyoung346 @jancborchardt @tobiasKaminsky

[jancborchardt]

Looks like steps in the right direction! Some feedback:

• "Notification Bell icon will be removed from the search bar." – I'd say to keep the mechanism of having a shortcut to the notifications if there are unread ones. Otherwise you habe ti manually navigate into the account menu.
• Filter button: Instead of a filter button, we have plenty of space between the search and the file list. We can directly show a bar for switching "All" and "Shared" directly. "Favorites" is already in the bottom bar, and "Personal files" and "On device" are less important and could be put elsewhere if needed.
• The entries in the bottom navigation view all need text below them, not only the active one. Icons only are not understandable enough, especially for people who don't use the app every single day.

[tobiasKaminsky]

Timewise, as discussed with Andy, we will not plan/do this for NC31.
Also Google Drive uses both, bottom bar and side bar.

We can still continue to discuss and estimate chunks of (small) enhancements.

Important to consider is, that removing sidebar would have impact

• no branding
• no custom logo
• need to find a new place for external sites/links
• quota?
• space above quota is used for upsell plan on some branded apps

[jancborchardt]

Filter button: Instead of a filter button, we have plenty of space between the search and the file list. We can directly show a bar for switching "All" and "Shared" directly. "Favorites" is already in the bottom bar, and "Personal files" and "On device" are less important and could be put elsewhere if needed.

This is the conclusion we also came to just now in the design review. ;)

3 chips, single select (like in Google Maps reviews):

• All files
• Personal
• Shared

Next to it 1 icon for combined grid/list view and sorting (opens a modal).

Favorites stays in the bottom bar because it’s not a filter on the current view (favorites sorted up top already) but shows all favorites in a flat list.