The majority of applications available in the iTunes App Store is displaying information from the Internet, and those applications need a way of refreshing their data.
There are three widely used interface design approaches:
- The simple and effective refresh button
«TweetDeck for iPhone» has the simple and very effective refresh button in the tab bar. Other applications like the «New York Times» have the refresh button in the application top bar.
Such a refresh button is very easy to spot, but of course takes space from these two bars which could be used for other controls.
- The hidden, clickable item in a scrollable view
As seen for example in the Facebook application, there is a hidden, clickable item in a scrollable view where the user has to scroll to the top and then tap on the item to invoke a refresh.
This solution is hard to find when using it for the first time, but once found, it’s a very neat way to save some space for content or other buttons.
- The hidden item in a scrollable view without tapping
The guys behind Gowalla took Facebook’s solution a step further and just cut out the tapping part. The user only has to scroll to the very top and a bit further to activate a refresh.
The problem that this functionality is hard to spot still exists, but once used, it is in my point of view the most intuitive and therefore most preferred solution.
