My Android app has a screen that displays the details of an item selected from a list, as shown above. The screen allows the user to scroll to the next or previous item in the list by swiping horizontally, and I have added a couple of icons to try to indicate this. The icons are also clickable, and when clicked they perform the same actions as the swipe gestures.
The icons are not exactly intuitive, because the swipe gestures are in the opposite direction to the movement of the screen in the list. Swiping from right to left moves the screen to the next record, but the arrow implies that it will move to the previous one. I am constrained by space though, and this is the best I could come up with.
Should I scrap the icons altogether, or leave things as they are? Would it be better if the icons displayed some help text when clicked, rather than scrolling the list? I really want the user to swipe the screen rather than trying to use the buttons as icons.
Update: on further consideration, I decided to remove the icons. The Android design guidelines discuss swiping but make no mention of providing the user with any visual clues. That settles the matter as far as I am concerned. Android is implying that the user should be smart enough to work it out for himself, given the context.