How should you show that an accordion is expanded?
When you have an accordion, you need some way of showing the current state is expanded.
There are a number of different ways of handling this, and each is used by a number of respected websites and frameworks. Hence it's not clear which method is best to use in which situation.
When is it best to use which method? Bonus points for any studies on this.
No symbols at all, just colour to indicate the expansion
Gmail for Android uses this, but here are some clearer examples:
Left and down chevrons on the right
These are used by the BBC Global Experience Language:
Up and down chevrons on the right
These are used in the Android Design Guidelines documentation and in Silverlight.:
Right and down chevrons on the left
Plus (+) and minus (-) symbols on the right
This is used as the default in ExtJS