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The Main Screens of an application are listed in the main navigation. When a user goes to one of these screens they have the ability to open the navigation and get to another Main Screen.

If a user clicks on a piece of content on a Main Screen, they have the ability to then navigation 'back' to the Main Screen they came from. For iOS you will see a Back button in the upper right and for Android you will have the 'Up Button'.

For the purposes of this question, we are using a hamburger menu for our main navigation:

My question is what if you have a call-to-action on the Home Screen to immediately jump to one of the Main Screen. Do you have a 'Back Button' to bring the user back to the Home Screen, or keep the main navigation in the upper left corner and let the user choose where they wan to go next?

Thank you for any thoughts on this.

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    I don't really understand the setup. In IA terms, the hamburger usually reveals the 'hub' in a 'hub and spokes' navigation structure. As such, the menu revealed by the hamburger is, in essence, the 'home screen'. I fail to think of a mobile app that has both hamburger menu and a home screen. Or do I misunderstand what 'home screen' mean?
    – Izhaki
    Jun 18, 2014 at 19:51

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Imagine it was a website. What would happen in when a user clicked the back button? That's what a "back" link should do.

If you want to move the user higher up in a page hierachy then make that clear.

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  • I disagree, in a mobile application you have top level screens a user will get to from the Navigation. Then you have sub-level screens a user gets to from those top level, such as an article. The navigation appears on the top level but not on the sub-level screens. So you can't act like its a website.
    – Xtian
    Jun 20, 2014 at 21:52
  • My point was to make the intent of the button clear. If the user understands the button to be a back button then it should behave as a back button which is a well understood pattern. If the context of the button in an OS makes it clear that it's an "up" button then the button should behave like that. If I've misunderstood you and you're saying that when a user taps a "back" button they should go to a mid-level hierarchy page they've not seen before, then I think that'd be very confusing.
    – edeverett
    Jun 21, 2014 at 10:00

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