Tab based layout or not?

Question

The app I'm designing initially had a tab based layout in its early stage (Android version). Since working on the iPhone version I've gone with just using ViewControllers to allow the user to navigate through. In some ways it feels more fluid but it may be confusing to the user.

The app analyses and visualises incoming audio according to different parameter sets (these are the data items). There are two views, the audio analyses view and the data / edit view. There is also a view that lists the different data items, that will allow for online database search and discovery.

The tab based layout had something like:

Visualise | Edit | Search | Settings

The view controller layout has a path like:

Search (click on item) -> Visualise -> Edit

The Visualise view has a right nav button to edit.

I'm more of a programmer than UX designer so wondering if any UX people have some tips on how to make such decisions.

Answer 1

I'm wondering why you chose to use the view controller on iOS app.

iPhone typically uses tabs for navigation while Android often makes use of menu (hamburger icon) for navigation.

I know I have a hard time with how to deal with a drilled down navigation in a tabbed app but keeping the tabs and making good use of the back button and edit on the right hand side (as you are doing already) might work better.

Here a link the iOS guidelines for tabs (further down that page)

Answer 2

Tabs are making a comeback for their superior user engagement. It's an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of phenomena with users and drawer style controllers.