How to handle a single option in a dropdown?
I have an android screen that displays one dropdown select 'spinner' like this (the 'THIS WEEK▼' item)
The app has multiple games and each game has its own leaderboards.
The designer says that if there is only one element in the Spinner don't show dropdown and arrow and show dropdown and arrow only there are two or more elements.
I don't think it is good from UX point of view. The logic is that a user may initially open game A which shows this spinner and the context is set that this screen have a selector on top. While, when he moves to game B where there is only one element he may think it as some kind of User Interface bug.
The designer says that user would feel awkward if he sees one element only and realize there is nothing to select.
I am not a designer. But, I feel my view is correct for few reasons.
Once a designer told me UI controls should be consistent. That is why we use disabled states for buttons instead of making it invisible.
With time user becomes familiar with the UI of the app especially with controls. Also, there is some general context with few things. For ex. A circular button with icon and shadow suggests that it is a clickable button. (Floating Action Button). If I don't show the arrow it happens to be a simple TextView, which doesn't sets the context of a selectable button destroying consistency of UI Control.
I have seen in most of the apps, that Options Menu if having only one item is displayed as drop down. Even if we don't want to show drop down we must show arrow and some disabled state indicating that it is not selected.
Still, I am not a designer and I want to clarify this. Hence, I put this question here.