Panel Navigation Controls for Consistent UI State
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Solution Overview
Problem
User interfaces that allow navigation between multiple panels face challenges in consistently displaying earlier panels due to multiple paths and changing content, making it difficult to maintain user orientation and system persistence of navigation paths.
Innovation Solution
A method and computer program product that allow users to navigate between panels by selecting a path with the lowest common node or nearest common node to the original path, ensuring that more navigation controls remain unchanged, thereby minimizing disruption and maintaining user interface consistency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the system allows multiple navigation paths to panels, then user flexibility is improved, but user orientation deteriorates due to inconsistent panel appearance
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-establishes a default navigation path from each panel back to its parent panel. When a user navigates to a panel, the system has already prepared the return path information, so when the user requests to go back, the system can immediately restore the previous navigation state without requiring the user to re-trace their steps or deal with multiple possible paths.
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides feedback to the user about their current location in the navigation hierarchy by displaying the current panel's title and maintaining consistent navigation controls. This feedback mechanism helps users understand where they are in the overall structure, preventing disorientation even when multiple paths exist to reach panels.
2Stability of the object's composition
If the system restores the original navigation path, then panel appearance consistency is improved, but system complexity increases due to path memory requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The navigation system is segmented into hierarchical levels, with each panel knowing its parent panel. Instead of remembering the entire navigation path as a single complex structure, the system breaks it down into discrete parent-child relationships. This segmentation allows the system to restore navigation state by simply traversing up the hierarchy to the parent panel, reducing the memory burden while maintaining consistency.
Solution Approach 2:
The parent panel concept serves multiple functions: it acts as the restoration target for navigation, defines the hierarchical structure, and provides the context for the child panel. This multi-functionality reduces the need for separate path-memory mechanisms, as the hierarchical structure itself encodes the navigation information.
3Adaptability or versatility
If navigation controls change substantially, then adaptability to current context is improved, but user disorientation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The navigation controls are designed with local quality, where each panel displays navigation elements appropriate to its context (such as a 'Back' button or breadcrumb trail showing the path to parent). This allows the interface to adapt to the current panel's specific needs while maintaining a consistent pattern of navigation controls that users can recognize and understand across different panels.
Data Source
AI summary
Successively displaying panels in a computer user interface. A method includes displaying a first panel of a plurality of panels. Each of the panels includes different information. The computer user interface has a plurality of navigation controls by which a user can navigate to any of the panels to access its information. A first setting of the navigation controls causes the first panel to be displayed. A user input requesting access to a second panel is received, there being at least two settings of the navigation controls that will cause the second panel to be displayed. The method includes ceasing to display the first panel and displaying the second panel using one of the at least two different settings by which more of the navigation controls remain unchanged from the first setting. Methods may be used in hierarchies and in arrangements that do not form trees.