Why are we doing this?
- Currently, the “Explore“ tab contains a modal drawer (hamburger icon).
- From an information architectural point of view, a bottom drawer is the way to go. The current, contextual modal drawer contains global items such as “Settings“, “Notifications“, “Support Wikipedia“, “About“ and “Help“.
- The only contextual item for the “Explore“ tab is “Customize the feed“, which can be moved to “Settings”.
- It makes all nav items within the drawer more discoverable (less taps needed) and accessible (closer to bottom = thumb friendly).
- As a result, it will likely lead to more donations through “Support Wikipedia“, as obvious always wins (L. Wroblewski).
Check out Google Material Design’s section about bottom drawers for reference.
Proposed designs
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Changes
- Add “More” item to bottom navigation.
- Use bottom navigation drawer instead of side navigation drawer.
- New bottom navigation drawer is accessed via “More” item.
- Restyle header with username to be displayed on one line
- Remove “Customize the feed” option from navigation drawer
- Add “Explore feed” to “Settings” (Copy: “Customize the Explore feed”)
- Remove shadows from top nav bar
- Swipe anywhere in feed no longer opens this menu
- How do measure success?
- See subtask: T253240
- Compare usage of drawer before and after
- Compare usage of items in drawer before and after (access of/taps on individual items)
- Especially interesting: “Support Wikipedia”
Future (not for this update)
- Include “Search” instead of “History” in bottom navigation
- Rename / rebrand “Suggested edits” to “Contribute”
- ☝️ These two items depend on the outcome of T253240, where we are looking into usage of current navigation items in the app.
- Rename / rebrand “My lists” to “Lists” as we’re considering to add Watchlist functionality. Depends on the outcome of T253129, T253130.
Visual for future navigation:
