In a hub-and-spoke structure, a central hub page is the single entry point from which users navigate to individual spoke pages, then return to the hub before moving to another spoke. This reflects a common browsing behavior, click a link, view its content, return, click another link. Hub-and-spoke is very common in mobile apps and can work well for information spaces with a limited scope or for individual sections within a larger space, though it's less common as the structure for an entire large information space. More complex versions nest smaller hub-and-spoke structures within individual spokes.
Hub-and-spoke works well when each visit is a self-contained errand. It works poorly when the user's actual task requires moving fluidly between several pieces of content at once.
No, a linear sequence would better fit a task that has a required order and a clear endpoint. The loan application has exactly the traits the source material associates with a linear sequence: a defined set of steps, a required order, and a clear endpoint, submission. Hub-and-spoke is built around a different behavior entirely: visiting individual, largely self-contained spokes and returning to a central hub between each one.
This is not an implementation flaw: it's the pattern behaving exactly as designed, applied to a task it was never meant to serve. The mandatory return-to-hub between every section is hub-and-spoke's defining behavior, not an accident of this particular build. No redesign of the hub screen itself would remove that friction, because the friction comes from the pattern's basic structure, not its visual execution.A linear sequence would let users move directly from Income to Employment to Assets to References using Next and Previous controls, with a visible list of steps showing their progress toward the clear endpoint of submission, addressing the "exhausting" complaint directly, because it removes the repeated, unnecessary detour that hub-and-spoke requires by design.