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By default, I'm showing a screen with a particular country selected. To change the country, when the user taps on the text I trigger an overpanel listing the available countries to choose, but it isn't clear that the text is interactive, other than through the context of the screen. Using Chevrons and Google's 3 Vertical Dots makes it look like it triggers a dropdown.
Thanks!
Yes there is. Swiping from the top activates an overpanel on both iOs and Android (I don't know about Blackberry). However, I don't think this is what you're looking for. The obvious reason against implementing it this way, is that it will conflict with the native behavior of your phone. Besides, how would the user know from where to swipe to trigger the overpanel and how does the user know what's in the panel? So what are other ways to solve this?
Country selection is always a bit difficult. There are a lot of countries and the language in which to show them is not as straight forward as one might hope (eg The Netherlands, Nederland, Pays-Bas).
First of all, let's make it clear that the country can be changed. This can be accomplished by showing 'change country' next to the country, or putting the country in a pull down / select box. I'm sure there are other ways, but these are the most common.
But how to solve the sorting problem (the United States would be be at the end of the list while, in most cases, it's the most popular choice)? You could use a grouped pull down and start with the three most picked countries and then start the alphabetic list.
On iOS at least, a picker view (technically named UIPickerView) is commonly used for presenting a list and making a selection. This view is typically presented from the bottom of the screen.
You can get something like this:
1.Generally if you want a minimalistic way you can use different text color prefereably blue, some shadow. which indicates it as a link and this interaction is used and most of the users are trained for this interaction
2.Using a chevron is the best way because it clearly states the true purpose.
3.while usage of 3 dots is something different which doesnt suit here.
4.You can also give a button feel to it by giving some border or background overlay to it.
What you intend to use, in the contexts of both iOS and Android, are called Pickers.
Check out the Date Picker on Material Design Guidelines. For picking countries, you would require something similar to the year picker.
For iOS, check out Pickers. Its the same as @Stephenye has pointed out in her answer.
Also, in case you feel using a chevron or more icon is giving the impression of a dropdown, use a custom icon. The Languages icon on the Material Icons website might be a good start, for example.
The custom icon would imply an action that is different from the rest.
Decide on a single color that is consistently used for interactive UI components throughout your app. This makes it easy for the user to quickly identify which parts of a UI that can be interacted with.
Once you have that you can further increase the affordance by adding additional icons or texts but many times will not be necessary.
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