Combining tab bars iOS

Question

I am creating iOS app that have many sub views and I am wondering what is best approach. In my main screen I have tab bar with options like list of. customers, documents, map, calendar etc. When I go to customers details, things are getting complicated. My client demands that he will be able to easily access things like documents of client, client activities, promotions etc for customers details view. To sum up I have 7+ sub views that should be accessible from customer view.

Now My approach looks like this. When I enter Customer details View I hide tab bar and show toolbar with these options that navigate me to view like customer activities etc.

I know that toolbar is not the best tool for that, because It supposed to be container of tools and not tab bar but, I think that using new tab bar in Customer details view will be more confusing (also tab bar can contain only 5 option without More button). Is there any other solution? I thought about scrollable android-like tab bar but I don't know if it is acceptable for iOS users.

Answer 1

I'd suggest something called a navigation hub.

It's not something that you see a lot. You can use it for long lists of menu items when they're all important and need to be accessed easily.

Since you have a lot of important menu items it's not a good idea to hide them behind a 'more' button.

Nielsen Norman Group has a great article about different navigation patterns. They also include the navigation hub.

Keep the tab bar the same in all your views. Do not confuse your users.

The image below shows how a navigation hub could look. You can either have them in a list (left) or an android-like 'cards' view (right). This is a good idea if you have items with images that need a bit more room.

Users can click on the items to go to a detail view of the item and perform their actions there.

Adding the navigation hub as an extra step makes things a lot more clear.