Hidden or Visible navigation in mobile

Question

visible navigatin

I'm working on new project (shopping app), am planning to keep visible side navigation on mobile app, does visible nav provides a good user experience than hidden nav?

please find the attached example of wireframe image

Answer 1

I don't think it's a good idea to keep that navigation bar permanently open unless user is supposed to click on those items very frequently. Given that it's a shopping app most of the time users would be viewing the list of items and their details and might not be needing those options on their screen every time.

Also, people may access your app on all kinds of screen size which could be as small as a 3.5 inch or 4 inch. Any extra information on the screen is going to degrade the experience.

You can provided a sliding bar kind of control something like https://cdn2.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3447048/How_to_get_free_kindle_books_on_Android_5.png (3 horizontal bars). Clicking on which would bring the options into view/focus and then go away when you click out of that area or the same icon. Other benefit of using this approach is you can add some message against your options which would not be possible(for want of space) if you permanently keep those icons visible. Not providing the detail of what those icons do will leave your users guessing