Dropdown

Color

In the Alkami Platform, colors play a large role in helping users understand how to interact with the system. Following the Guidance and Affordance color paradigms, dropdowns can reinforce these mental models. When using a dropdown as a way for users to select from a list of actions, use affordance colors.  When using a dropdown as a way for users to navigate to another area of the app, use guidance colors.

Affordance colors (action dropdown)

Guidance colors (navigational dropdown)

Elevation

Spacing

Trigger spacing

Standard list item spacing

Standard list item keyline spacing

All list items do not need to have a leading icon, but when mixing list items with and without leading icons, ensure labels always align to the keyline. This ensures that users can quickly scan the list items without the need to bounce back and forth due to some list items not having icons. Keylines also come in handy when list items wrap to multiple lines.

Account list item spacing

Account list item keyline spacing

When account list items have become selected, the account component within the list item compresses down to provide space for the selected item indicator. This creates a keyline in which all the account components in each list item (selected or not) condense down to remain aligned along the right edge.

Selected list items

Once selected, the available horizontal space for list items shrink slightly to make space for the selected item indicator. Once the selected item indicator is shown, the spacing along the right edge of the dropdown changes.

International phone number

Min/max

The width of list items should expand to fill the width of the parent container by default. If the parent container doesn’t make sense to snap to, or the available space is too small (<185px) or too large (>440px) to properly display the dropdown, the width is determined by the longest list item. Once the dropdown reaches 440px wide, the list items should wrap to the next line. 

Badges (used only with quick action button trigger) represent how many list items have been selected by the user. Usability when selecting multiple list items starts to take a hit when more than just a handful of selections are made. If a user may want to select more than 5 selection, consider using a different solution. A bottom sheet or side sheet could be a great place to list out a large group of chips that a user could add/remove one by one instead of tediously selecting from a dropdown (that could easily be cancelled inadvertently.  

Color

Shape

Spacing

‍

Since dropdowns are always hidden by default, some amount of motion is needed when triggered so the user understands where the contextual content is originating.

Expand and collapse

Expand

When the trigger is tapped or clicked, the dropdown surface fades from 0% to 100% opacity and moves downward 4px into a resting position. In the case of a flow up placement, the surface will move upward 4px into a resting position.

Collapse

Dropdown using caret

When using the label with caret combo trigger, the caret should rotate +180° upon opening and closing the dropdown — thus completing a circular movement. The dropdown opening motion is timed to sync with the rotating caret. The image below, while it’s showing an input field, the label with caret combo trigger caret behaves the same.

Input dropdown considerations

Triggering the dropdown from an input field has two distinct outcomes: dropdown expansion only, or dropdown expansion and input focus.

Dropdown expansion only

When the user clicks on the input field trailing icon, the dropdown expands without triggering focus on the input field. What this does for mobile users is avoids the soft keyboard triggering and blocking the view of the dropdown. This is also handy for widescreen users who prefer to select an option with their mouse instead of keying in values manually with their keyboard.  If a selection has already been made, clicking the field trailing icon will still show all fields and not clear selected item text from the input nor set the cursor in the input field. The dropdown will not be filtered until focus is manually moved to the input.

• When tabbing, focus goes to the input first. 

• When focus is in the input, the filter feature is activated and non-matching items will vanish from the visible list of options in the dropdown. 

• Then pressing tab again will go to the button.

• If enter is pressed while focusing on the button, all dropdown items would show (not be filtered) even if content is in the input, just as it would if a user clicked with a mouse. 

Input focus & dropdown expansion

When the user clicks on any area of the input field other than the trailing icon, both the input field receives focus and the dropdown expands. As the user types characters, only the remaining list items that match the input remain. Almost acting like a filter, a user could continue to type out characters until no list items remain.

Filter and auto-selection rules

Filter the results based on the string typed.  Any part of any visible text (not icons or images or meta data) that matches the typed string should be shown in the dropdown while all other items are removed (filtered out).  Any part of the dropdown items’ string values can be searched/filtered. For example, if a user clicked the Textfield/Input area of a list of US states then typed “te” the items remaining in the dropdown would be Tennessee and Texas. If they typed “na” the results would be Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. 

When the dropdown is triggered, it presents suggested values that complete or logically correspond to the characters typed in the textbox, and the first suggestion is automatically highlighted as selected. The automatically selected suggestion becomes the value of the textbox when the combobox loses focus unless the user chooses a different suggestion or changes the character string in the textbox. Pressing the Esc key will clear the selection and all text in the input, but the cursor will remain in the input.

If the user types in the field but does not select an item, the field will clear when the focus leaves the field. 

When using the Input Dropdown with a dropdown containing the accounts component, filter on the account nickname and the unmasked portion of the account number. For example if the account Name was “My Checking” and the unmasked account numbers were “4567” this account would appear if tying any part of the string of either the name or the number. 

Interacting outside the dropdown

When tapping or clicking anywhere outside the dropdown surface, the assumption is the user does not intend to interact with the dropdown content, and the dropdown is closed.

View scrolling

If the view is scrolled after opening a dropdown, the dropdown is left open and maintains the same position while allowing the content underneath to continue scrolling. There is no need to adjust the size or position of the opened dropdown once scrolling begins.

Browser resize

The dropdown will be closed automatically if there is a browser resize event. There is no expectation that the dropdown position updates based on a browser resize event.