Adopting a Side Navigation UI
In recent years, examples of adopting (applying) a SIDE NAVIGATION UI in mobile web or mobile applications have grown.
Only — many of them seem to approach it as a design or UI trend, so I want to organize a brief note.
Composing a SIDE NAVIGATION is not something you can solve simply by adding a dynamic interaction or by dropping in the GNB that used to sit at the top.
It is a UI form that ultimately came into being to minimize the "depth" concept of navigation, so the composition must be a list of detailed categories rather than top-level menus.
In other words, if, after entering a page via the side navigation, the user has to select a menu or a category again, it has already lost its identity. If it is merely a way of listing menus, it is a disadvantageous UI.
Most mobile screens are taller than they are wide. Despite that, why would you deliberately extend the menu bar vertically?
Please — when you benchmark, I think you must consider not the surface but also the reasons the thing came into being and the process of agonizing behind it.
(On the side... ecosystem or platform designs like the App Store too...)
