Don't interrupt the user's flow

  • Post by Hannes Dorfmann
  • Aug 18, 2015

From my point of view user experience is a very important topic but sometimes doesn’t get the attention it deserves. In this blog post I want to show you how to use RecyclerView to build an user experience that is not interrupting the user’s flow.

I’m very lucky to work in a very talented team at Tickaroo where we are building and maintaining the android and iOS apps for kicker, one of the most important football magazine in Europe (even though the main language is German). The app basically displays news about football (but also about other sports), live scores & live updates (push notifications), statistics, videos, photo galleries and so on and so forth. A few days ago we published an update for the kicker android app where we integrated a new interactive feature: tip game (betting game, footy tipping, tip guessing or whatever the name for that is in your local area). So the idea is that the users of the kicker app try to guess the results of football games and get points when the guessed results are correct.

When starting the kicker app you see a RecyclerView displaying different items, amongst others news articles, game results and upcoming games. The first question is how do we integrate the new tip game feature? Next, how does the user can submit “tips” (try to guess the result) for a game? We could have made our life easy (from developers point of view) and simply start a new Activity to display a list of games the user can submit “tips” for (try to guess the result). But we decided to implement two “modes” because we already display the last results and upcoming games in the RecyclerView: The “normal” mode where our users see the upcoming games or results of the last games and the “tip” mode where users can submit a tip (guess the result) and see if their guess was correct after the game is finished. So the final result looks like this:

Instead of interrupting the users flow by starting a new Activity we decided to switch between both modes with a flip animation by pressing the “tippen” (german for “guessing results”) and “schließen” (german for “close”) button.

How did we implement that? Obviously I can’t share the whole source code, but I will give you some insights and pitfalls we have faced.

Flip items

As you have seen in the video shown above we are animating the items of the RecyclerView. We started by using a layout file containing both child layouts for normal mode and tip mode, like this:

 <FrameLayout>
    <LinearLayout
      android:id="normalMode"
      android:layout_width="match_parent"
      android:layout_height="match_parent">
        ...
    </LinearLayout>

    <LinearLayout
      android:id="tipMode"
      android:layout_width="match_parent"
      android:layout_height="match_parent"
      android:visibility="invisible">
        ...
    </LinearLayout>

 </FrameLayout>

Then the ViewHolder in the RecyclerView will have a reference to “normalMode” and “tipMode” layout. Flipping the views is simply a rotationX() animation as shown below (don’t forget to set the visibility from “visible” to “invisible” and vice versa):

public void animateToTipMode(TipViewHolder holder, int delay){
 int duration = 100;
 // Flip the "normalMode" View "out"
 ViewCompat.animate(viewHolder.normalMode)
          .rotationX(90) // Animate from 0 to 90
          .setDuration(duration)
          .setStartDelay(delay)
          .setListener(new ViewPropertyAnimatorListenerAdapter(){
              @Override public void onAnimationEnd(View view) {
                viewHolder.normalMode.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
              }
            })
          .start();

  // Flip the "topMode" View "in"
  ViewCompat.setRotationX(holder.tipMode, -90);
  ViewCompat.animate(viewHolder.tipMode)
           .rotationX(0) // Animate from -90 to 0
           .setDuration(duration)
           .setStartDelay(delay)
           .setListener(new ViewPropertyAnimatorListenerAdapter(){
               @Override public void onAnimationEnd(View view) {
                 viewHolder.normalMode.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
               }
             })
           .start();
}

So basically the animation runs from 0 to 90 for animating view out and from -90 to 0 for animating the view in. The wave alike execution of the flip animation is done by adding a start delay and increase that delay for each item. So all we have to do is to collect those items above the button that triggers the switch between both modes. TipViewHolder is the ViewHolder for the xml layout containing normalMode and tipMode child layouts. In the old days of ListView we would have done that simply by iterating over its children with ListView.getChildAt(index), but RecyclerView internally handles its children different (with a LayoutManager). Hence, RecyclerView.getChildAt(index) doesn’t return the views in the expected order as the ListView does. When working with RecyclerView you have to work with ViewHolder as well. ViewHolder is not just a plain old class to hold references to the child views and to reduce findViewById() operations, no, ViewHolder knows more about how it is used internally in the parent RecyclerView. So you can query the current adapter position of a ViewHolder with ViewHolder.getAdapterPosition(). We use that to get the adapter position of the button that starts the flip animation (have a look at the video shown above: there is a button to start the flip animation to switch between “normal mode” and “tip mode”). In our app we know that all games (TipViewHolder) are above the clicked button, so we just have to iterate from button position up in adapters dataset. We also can assume that between two groups of games / tips is at least one other type of ViewHolder, hence we can use instanceof TipViewHolder to dertermine where the wave animation should stop:

public void onSwitchToTipModeClicked(ViewHolder buttonViewHolder){

  int adapterPosition = buttonViewHolder.getAdapterPosition();
  int index = adapterPosition - 1;
  int delay = 70;

  while (index >= 0){
    ViewHolder vh = recyclerView.findViewHolderForAdapterPosition(index);

    if (! (vh instanceof TipViewHolder) ){
       break;
    }

    animateToTipMode((TipViewHolder) vh, delay * (adapterPosition - index));
    index --;
  }

}

We use to viewHolder.getAdapterPosition() to determine the start position and then we step up in the adapter and check if the ViewHolder at the given index is of type TipViewHolder. We can get the ViewHolder at the given adapter position by using RecyclerView.findViewHolderForAdapterPosition(index). Note that this returns null if there is no ViewHolder for that adapter index because the item with the given adapter index is not visible on screen (item is above or below the visible rectangle of RecyclerView, the user have to scroll to bring that item into RecyclerViews visible rectangle). Please note also that null instanceof Something returns false.

Another thing developers should take more care of when building their UI is that animations can be used to “hide” that the app is loading data. In our app when the user switches from “normal mode” to “tip mode” we execute a http request to load the previously guessed results (if there are any) in background. Usually, our users don’t notice that data has been loaded because we don’t show a loading indicator. We use the time the wave alike animation takes to load the data. This gives the user of our app the impression that our app works lightning fast because there is no visual interruption by displaying a loading indicator. What if the user has a slow internet connection? Then yes, we display a loading indicator after the wave animation is finished.

The downside

What is the downside of this approach? The layout file contains a huge view hierarchy since it displays both “normalMode” and “tipMode”. That wouldn’t be a problem if the majority of our users would use high level devices like a Galaxy S6 or even devices comparable with Nexus 4. Unfortunately it turns out that decent devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini are the most used devices of our users. What does that mean? Huge view hierarchy leads to bad scroll performance, especially noticeable on low-end devices. The tip game is an optional feature of our app mainly used by power users. I, personally, expect that about 30% of our users will participate in the tip game. That would mean that 70% of the users may face scroll performance issues because of the tip game even if they don’t participate in the tip game at all. Hence, we decided to implement the flip animation in a different way: Instead of having one single xml layout for both modes (normal and tip mode) we decided to split them into two layout files and define two view types in our adapter.

Disclaimer: This might be an overkill if your layout files are already flat enough then the solution described above should just work. However, for us it was necessary to work with different view types to guarantee acceptable scroll performance even on decent devices.

Let me explain you how we have implement the same wave alike animation as described in the previous solution: Fortunately, RecyclerView is really powerful and open for extensions. We have implemented a custom ItemAnimator that executes the flip animation (still the same rotationX animation as shown before, from 0 to 90 and -90 to 0). Writing a custom ItemAnimator is not rocket science but it takes some time to dive into the methods you have to implement to make the ItemAnimator work properly. You may be confused why we need an ItemAnimator. An ItemAnimator allows you do define animations to run when new items are inserted, moved or removed from RecyclerViews Adapter. So what we do is we modify the adapters dataset. The idea is the same as shown in the previous solution: we iterate over the adapters dataset, but this time instead of checking for the ViewHolder and starting the flip animation manually we remove the Game items (displaying items in “normal mode”) from adapters dataset and replace them with Tip items (displaying items in “tip mode”). How is it related to ItemAnimator? If you haven’t noticed yet, RecyclerView offers two methods notifyItemRangeRemoved() and notifyItemRangeInserted():

public void onSwitchToTipModeClicked(ViewHolder buttonViewHolder, List dataset){

  int MIN_DEVICE_YEAR = 2012;

  int adapterPosition = buttonViewHolder.getAdapterPosition();
  int index = adapterPosition - 1;
  int bottomIndex = index;
  int invisibleStartIndex = - 1;

  List<Tip> tipsToInsert = new ArrayList<>();

  while (index >= 0){
    Object item = dataset.get(index);

    if (! (item instanceof Game) ){
       break;
    }

    Game game = (Game) item;

    RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder =
            recyclerView.findViewHolderForAdapterPosition(index);

    if (viewHolder == null){
      // Element not visible on screen, so we can replace the item directly
      dataset.set(index, game.getTip());

      if (invisibleStartIndex == -1){
        invisibleStartIndex = index;
      }

    } else {
      // Element is visible on screen
      viewHolder.itemView.setTag(R.id.adapterIndexWorkaround, adapterPosition); // Workaround
      tipsToInsert.add(0, game.getTip()); // Keep the order
    }

    index--;
  }

  int topIndex = invisibleStartIndex >=  0 ? invisibleStartIndex :  index + 1 ;

  // Remove old visible "Game" items
  for (int i = bottomIndex; i >= topIndex; i--) {
      dataset.removeItem(i); // Reason for workaround
  }

  if (deviceYear >= MIN_DEVICE_YEAR){
    adapter.notifyItemRangeRemoved(topIndex, tipsToInsert.size()); // Triggers remove flip animation
  }

  // Insert visible "Tip" items
  dataset.addAll(topIndex, tipsToInsert);

  if (deviceYear >= MIN_DEVICE_YEAR){
    adapter.notifyItemRangeInserted(topIndex, tipsToInsert.size()); // Triggers insert flip animation
  } else {
    // Without animations because of low-end device
    adapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
  }

}

Let’s discuss the code shown above: Similar to the first discussed solution we start at the adapter position of the button to switch between the normal and tip mode. Since we can assume that the button is visible in the RecyclerView (otherwise it couldn’t be clicked right?) and all Games of this group are above the button we just have to iterate from bottom to top in adapters dataset. We use the check item instanceof Game to determine where the group of games finishes (in our app we always have at least one different item between a group of games). Next we check if viewHolder == null which means that the item is not visible in RecyclerView. In that case we can directly replace the Game item with the corresponding Tip item. We also note the index where the first not visible item begins by storing the list position into invisibleStartIndex. If the item is visible then we add the corresponding tip into tipsToInsert. We also have to implement a little workaround to keep the original adapter’s position by using setTag() which allows to store data in an internally Map<Integer, Object> every android.view.View has (it’s recommended to use R.id.something as key). Why do we need this workaround? Well, we want that our ItemAnimator flips the items in a wave alike manner. To schedule the single animations for each item correctly it’s important to know the index. Every ViewHolder knows it’s index by using viewHolder.getAdapterPosition(), but that method will return -1 as we have removed the item from adapters dataset. Usually ItemAnimator could use viewHolder.getOldPosition() which would return the previous position (before removing item from adapters dataset). But the problem is that in our concrete use case all viewHolder.getOldPosition() return the same value. Why? Because we are removing every item manually in a for loop (because List lacks a method to remove a multiple items at once similar to list.addAll()). Hence, our ItemAnimator have to use that workaround to schedule the flip animation properly. Last, you may have noticed MIN_DEVICE_YEAR. I can’t remember what the problem exactly was (I should note down such things), but on very old devices you can run into the problem that the RecyclerView reaches an insane internal state (which can lead to crashes) if the item animation takes to long because of low-end hardware. To avoid that we use Facebook’s Device Year Class library to detect old devices and simply don’t run the flip animation on those devices by directly calling adapter.notifyDataSetChanged().

Submit a tip

Next you may be wondering how you can submit a tip. We started by implementing a dialog with number pickers. But the problem was that you have to open the dialog for a game to submit a tip, close the dialog and open the next tip dialog for the next tip. This was definitely not the user experience we wanted. So we improved that by passing a list of games the user can guess results for to a single dialog to avoid opening and closing the dialog for each game:

Guessing in a rush

However, a Dialog is still interrupting the user’s experience. So we came up with the idea to use swipe gestures. This allows the user to guess results on the fly without interrupting the user’s flow by displaying a Dialog. Have a look at the final result:

By swiping the item to the right the user can increase the score of the home team while swiping the item left increases the away team score. Implementing that is straight forward if you have ever worked with MotionEvents on android before. In a nutshell: every android ViewGroup offers two methods that are called during dispatching MotionEvents: In boolean onInterceptTouchEvent() you get some MotionEvents to decide if that ViewGroup should intercept and consume all following MotionEvents afterwards in void onTouchEvent(). It’s like ordering a good bottle of wine in a restaurant. The waiter brings you the bottle and a wine glass and offers you a sip of the ordered wine. After taking a small sniff, inspecting the color, swirling the wine in the glass you decide whether to keep the wine or not (returning true or false in onInterceptTouchEvent()). If yes, you consume the wine (onTouchEvent()). Working with RecyclerView is no different. Fortunately, you don’t have to subclass RecyclerView and override that methods because those methods are already used to detect scroll and fling events. RecyclerView offers you to add an OnItemTouchListener to intercept MotionEvents on the displayed itmes in the RecyclerView.

public abstract class TipSwipeListener implements RecyclerView.OnItemTouchListener {

  private final int threshold;
  private float xStart = 0;
  private float yStart = 0;
  private TipViewHolder startViewHolder;

  private int increaseMaxSwipeDistance;

  @Override public boolean onInterceptTouchEvent(RecyclerView rv, MotionEvent e) {

    final int action = MotionEventCompat.getActionMasked(e);

    // Touching somewhere in the RecyclerView
    if (action == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN) {
      xStart = e.getX();
      yStart = e.getY();

      // Determine the View we touch
      View startTouchedView = rv.findChildViewUnder(e.getX(), e.getY());
      if (startTouchedView == null) {
        return false;
      }

      // Determine the ViewHolder that has been touched
      RecyclerView.ViewHolder vh = rv.getChildViewHolder(startTouchedView);

      if (vh != null && vh instanceof TipViewHolder) {
        startViewHolder = (TipViewHolder) vh;
      }
      return false;
    }

    // Move the finger on the screen (not released finger from screen yet)
    if (action == MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE && startViewHolder != null) {

      float xDif = Math.abs(xStart - e.getX());
      float yDif = Math.abs(yStart - e.getY());

      if (xDif >= threshold && xDif > yDif) {
        // finger is moving horizontally
        return true;
      }

      // finger is moving vertically
      return false;
    }

    // releasing finger from screen
    if (action == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP || action == MotionEvent.ACTION_CANCEL) {
      reset();
    }

    return false;
  }

  @Override public void onTouchEvent(RecyclerView rv, MotionEvent e) {

    final int action = MotionEventCompat.getActionMasked(e);

    float xDif = e.getX() - xStart;

    if (action == MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE) {
      if (startViewHolder.getTippView() != null) {

        if (xDif < 0) {
          startViewHolder.translateXAwayTeam(0);
          startViewHolder.translateXHomeTeam(Math.max(xDif, -increaseMaxSwipeDistance));
        } else if (xDif > 0) {
          startViewHolder.translateXHomeTeam(0);
          startViewHolder.translateXAwayTeam(Math.min(xDif, increaseMaxSwipeDistance));
        } else {
          startViewHolder.getTippView().translateXHomeTeam(0);
          startViewHolder.getTippView().translateXAwayTeam(0);
        }
      }
    } else
      // Released or Canceled swipe gesture
      if (action == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP || action == MotionEvent.ACTION_CANCEL) {
        if (xDif < -increaseMaxSwipeDistance) {
          onIncreaseAwayScoreSwipe(); // Swiped far enough
        } else if (xDif > increaseMaxSwipeDistance) {
          onIncreaseHomeScoreSwipe(); // Swiped far enough
        } else {
          animateToStartState(xDif);
        }
      }
  }


  private void onIncreaseAwayScoreSwipe() {
    // Increment away team's score
    ...
    reset();
  }

  private void onIncreaseHomeScoreSwipe() {
    // Increment home team's score
    ...
    reset();
  }


  private void animateToStartState(float xDif) {
    // animate the X translation back to 0
    ...

    reset();
  }

  private void reset() {
    xStart = 0;
    yStart = 0;

    startViewHolder = null;
  }

}

Most of the code should be self explaining. We simply start in onInterceptTouchEvent() by checking if the user is touching on a Tip item by querying the touched view recyclerView.findChildViewUnder(x, y) and then check if the corresponding ViewHolder is a TipViewHolder by using recyclerView.getChildViewHolder(view). Next we check if the user is moving his finger to left or right. Please note that onInterceptTouchEvent() is called multiple times and we need to inspect more than one passed MotionEvent (parameter) to determine if the user is moving his finger to left or right (wine tasting). If the finger has been moved on x-achsis beyond a threshold, we return true to claim that we want continue to consume this gesture in onTouchEvent().

In onTouchEvent() we simply set translationX property according the distance and direction the user has moved his finger. increaseMaxSwipeDistance is the max distance the user can translate the views, which is half of the width of the box displaying the guessed result. And where does the +1 comes from while swiping? This is just a TextView which always was there hidden behind the box displaying the guessed result. By translating the view on x-achsis this TextView becomes visible. Actually, in our app we have overridden onDraw() to draw the +1 directly on the canvas of a custom parent layout to keep the layout hierarchy flat.

Adding an ItemTouchListener to a RecyclerView is quite easy: recyclerView.addOnItemTouchListener(). Last, you may be wondering if this horizontal swipe listener can be used in a ViewPager. It turns out that this is easier than expected. ViewPager, like any other ViewGroup, allows it’s children to claim that they don’t want that the parent intercepts touch events by calling ViewPager.requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent(boolean). So a good place to set requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent() to true would be in onInterceptTouchEvent() right before returning true and release it in reset(), called when finger has been moved up. By the way, if you don’t know if you have a ViewPager in your view hierarchy you can iterate recursively from bottom to top in your view hierarchy by using view.getParent() (do it only once and not every time you move your finger).

A disadvantage of our swipe approach is that the user can not decrease the guessed score since both x-achsis directions are already used. So we decided to keep the Dialog for that use case and for those not nimble-fingered users.

Side note: By using AdapterDelegates (favor composition over inheritance) we were able to bring the flip animation to switch between normal and tip mode to almost all RecyclerViews in our whole app without having code clones.

Conclusion

The less the user’s flow is interrupted, the better the experience. Other great examples following this principle are the Google Photos and Inbox. With some gestures and animation those apps are able to give their users an outstanding user experience. Whether or not you like our flip animation approach I hope you get an idea how ItemAnimator and OnTouchListener could be used together with RecyclerView to create an user experience that tries to interrupt the user’s flow as less as possible. By the way, the kicker app looks much better on a real device than on a youtube video.

PS: The credit for the described user experience in this blog post goes to the whole Tickaroo team and not only to me. We have developed this user experience together. Our designer had some initial thoughts and ideas, the iOS developers put some things into and we android developers as well during prototyping phase.

Additional Resources