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I’m designing a mobile navigation, where subnavigation options are hidden under the accordion.

Science +

↑ Closed nav section

Science -

View all ← Link to science category

Health

Cosmos

↑ Opened nav section

The issue that accordion title is a navigation option itself; but on the mobile it only can open or close the accordion.

So I’ve decided to go with “View all” approach.

The issue

It works OK for shops as view all books sounds natural:

Books
— View all
— Science
— Business
— ...

It doesn't work that good for example for magazines, because view all science sounds a bit awkward to me:

Science
— View all
— Cosmos
— Health
— ...

[Updated with more category examples as per request] Some other examples of categories are:

World
Opinion
Local
Politics
Sports
Tech

Is there some better words for that case?

Update HBO used Boxing → Boxing Home (they now seem to flatten their menu)

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5
  • I don't see an issue with "View All", but perhaps "All Categories" (or subcategories) sounds better?
    – DasBeasto
    Feb 28, 2018 at 19:08
  • The first thought that comes to mind is that "View all" is not the problem but rather a symptom of the incongruence between your main menu names, such as "Books" and "Science".
    – bloodyKnuckles
    Mar 1, 2018 at 15:45
  • @bloodyKnuckles I give these two examples as opposites, not as two items in my menu. In my opinion for plural nouns as shop categories view all would be fine, but for singular one as in magazines, it doesn't sound that well. If you continue the list it will be Books, Magazines, CDs... and Science, Technology, Sports...
    – Runnick
    Mar 1, 2018 at 17:31
  • 1
    it would help if you add all categories to your question in order to understand your logic. Right now this question doesn't have any possible correct answer and you're arguing against every single logical and accepted common answer, therefore there must be something we can't see but you do. Adding all other categories would help a lot
    – Devin
    Mar 2, 2018 at 17:54
  • @Devin Nice suggestion, although I can’t add all categories, because I’m making a WordPress theme and categories will be different from site to site, so I need really generic solution here. But you right, I’m adding some more examples...
    – Runnick
    Mar 3, 2018 at 10:21

6 Answers 6

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+50

Simply call it 'All {Category}'

You don't use the verb "View" anywhere else, so why use it here?

This is the most simple and meaningful label.

You get some slight repetition, but it's a small price for clarity.

Books

  • All Books
  • Science
  • Business

Science

  • All Science
  • Cosmos
  • Health
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10
  • I’m not the native speaker. Does combination of All + a singular noun like “Science” sound awkward? Because for me it does.
    – Runnick
    Mar 6, 2018 at 13:39
  • With all due respect, doesn’t being a non-native speaker put you at a slight disadvantage when it comes to making nuanced judgement calls about what sounds awkward or not? None of the options proposed sounds perfectly natural, because none can be. The perfectly natural option here would be the label ‘All of the Things in the Science Category’, but because of the length restrictions imposed by the context, we are forced to contract.
    – dennislees
    Mar 6, 2018 at 14:51
  • Because of this, menu items longer than one word are inherently awkward, but the question shouldn’t be whether a label is awkward, the question should be whether a label is clear enough in its meaning so as not to confuse a potential reader. Will a potential reader look at the label ‘All Books’ and think it means something other than ‘All of the Things in the Books Category’? I don’t think so, but what I think doesn’t really matter.
    – dennislees
    Mar 6, 2018 at 14:51
  • What I think doesn’t matter because in the realm of UX Design, we don’t design menus by obsessing over every language decision until we have something we think is perfect in our own opinion. Especially in challenging situations, we come up with a(n often group-sourced) hypothesis (in this case my hypothesis is “The label ‘All {Category}’ is sufficiently clear so as not to cause confusion to a user of this menu”) and we test that hypothesis with representative users of the menu. This should ideally be the case even when we feel we have created the perfect menu label.
    – dennislees
    Mar 6, 2018 at 14:51
  • So in the light of all that, the best you could have hoped for from this endeavor was not ‘the perfect label’ (because that doesn’t exist), but rather, the best candidate label on which to build a hypothesis on which to create a test that proves or disproves it. And judging by the fact that you’ve had to ask the question in the first place, the number of experienced UX’er eyes that have been on it, and the number of upvotes on this answer, I’d say that in ‘All {Category}’, you’ve got it.
    – dennislees
    Mar 6, 2018 at 14:51
3

It seems ok as it is right now - everyone knows what's going on.

What about being more explicit, i.e. for books "View all genres" and for science "View all categories" and so on?

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1
  • Being more explicit is good, but do not introduce new words (genres, categories). Just repeat the name of the dropdown (View all Books, View all Science).
    – jhurley
    Feb 28, 2018 at 15:15
2

I can think of another option(s) simply gathering around one simple idea as I can imagine from the view you created.

Listing the View All as a seperate option under the menu as a submenu item, just doesn't look like as a purpose of listing submenus (well, it still might be as your choice of course).

My reccomendation is to display the [View All] text as hyperlink next to the menu to occur no misambiguity when anyone looks at it like the example below;

Science [View All] - Cosmos Health ...

To be more figurative, you may choose to display the [View All] text within the menu item constantly or just visible when submenu opened.

Science [View All] +

or

Science +

and after a click returns to

Science [View All] - Cosmos Health ...

To say, you may make it visible whenever user clicks to + or just choose to display it as a constant option to make differantiation yet as another clickable option than opening the submenu.

The only undesirable situation here is giving the [View All] hyperlink text as a constant menu item indeed. It may cause your users click to the areas which they're not intend to.

Even it's a bit tricky, yet is another option to help make you see a differantion between the solutions.

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0

An alternative is to have the parent text link to the parent page with a toggle area beside it that opens the dropdown with the subcategories. That way there is no repetition and no ambiguity as to what anything means.

enter image description here Alternatively, the phrasing you have now doesn't seem confusing.

Edit: @Runnick's link reveals that this is not something users are accustomed to just yet (and maybe never will be). An example in the article shows how the parent page in the submenu is visually distinct, which I think helps quite a bit to get the point across (the "SPORTS HOME" button is pretty distinct).

enter image description here

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    Seems like Nielsen Norman Group think people are not yet familiar with this: nngroup.com/articles/split-buttons-navigation
    – Runnick
    Feb 28, 2018 at 18:33
  • 1
    The way HBO does it doesn’t convince me at all. SPORTS HOME sounds like a title, not an action. The button doesn’t look clickable to me at all, and it’s so far out of place from the rest of the design.
    – jazZRo
    Mar 1, 2018 at 9:07
  • @jazZRo Yeah, I don't know why they didn’t change it on the desktop, but my question is about mobile / touch. On the desktop you can click the category itself and submenu is shown on the hover.
    – Runnick
    Mar 1, 2018 at 17:37
0

"View All" is not my favorite solution but adding it as the last item on the sub nav list (if it's a short list) makes sense to me.

Books

— Science

— Business

— ...

— View all <-- This might be below the fold if its too many sub-nav items

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1
  • 1
    In most cases parent category will be as important or even more important than child, so placing view all in the end might not work well all the time.
    – Runnick
    Mar 1, 2018 at 17:35
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The name pattern doesn't have to repeat exactly under each category where it's available. Perhaps, customized name would work best.

Answering your question, "Explore all", or its variations (like "Explore everything"), seem to sound rather good for a science category.

As a good example of customization, let's have a look at how such issue approached in Amazon.

  1. The the top categories don't lead to any pages, they are not clickable, this comes very handy since consistent with the experience when browsing the site from a mobile device:

enter image description here

  1. There a category named "All videos":

enter image description here

  1. For Appstore for Android used "All" as well:

enter image description here

  1. Playful "All-New" for Echo & Alexa:

enter image description here

  1. For food & grocery "See All" used for its subdivision:

enter image description here

  1. And, sometimes even "All" is redundant:

enter image description here

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