There are considerable ways in which you can style, list, and showcase your app menu or navigable items. One of the popular styles is the bottom navigation bar.

It has elements named as icons, sometimes accompanied by texts, that are well-known and important enough to be highlighted. Upon selecting the bottom navigation bar icons, users can switch to a chosen view or refresh the currently active view.

This brings their app usage experience smoother and expedites navigability. It also makes the app content more discoverable, thereby giving a boost to engagement, interactions, conversions, responses to CTA buttons, and more.

Why do we need a Bottom Navigation Bar?

• The user can check which screen are they on at the time.
• It allows the user to change to distinct activities/fragments easily.
• It makes the user informed of the different screens functional in the app.

Importance

The bottom navigation bar aligns with the “thumb rule of design”. It acts on the principle, that most app users scroll and navigate apps using their thumbs. Hence, the primary and significant screens and pages within an app should be easily accessible by a user’s thumb.

This exhibition makes the bottom navigation bars a more important aspect of app design. It settles most of the essential sections of the app within the reach of the users’ thumb, thereby making it more convenient.

Instead of using just the hamburger menu, or any other menu design, one must also add the important items at the bottom of the app, in an easily navigable format. This bottom navigation bar can be kept constant across multiple or all screens on the app.

The Anatomy of bottom navigation bar

The layout or structure of a standard bottom navigation bar:

1. Container: It used to display destinations.
2. Active Label (Optional): The active label in navigation is the current screen or the one that the user clicks to go to.
3. Inactive Label (Optional): Every other icon or label remains inactive on the navigation bar.
4. Active Icon: As icons are pictorial representations, they catch the attention of the users faster than text. It indicates current active page.
5. Inactive Icon: Out of emphasis but noticeable.

Sizes

While the shape of icons relies upon their design, the format should show consistency. The mean size of the icons should also ideally remain similar.

The size may increase for active or pressed labels, to make it more unique. The length, height and width can be specified accordingly.

Best practices

Bottom navigation should let users get to the most important, or most used, features of the app. Simply remember these things:

1. Use 3–5 Destinations:

Make sure to use only 3–5 top priority destinations in the bottom navigation. Using more than 5 will leave you cramped for space, the tap targets will be very close to each other — and the users might end up tapping the wrong tab, which will only add to their frustrations with your UX.

Not to mention, every additional tab only increases the complexity of your app, compromising its performance.

If your app contains more than 5 important destinations, consider using a Google-like hamburger icon or place them at other easily accessible locations.

2. Don’t Use a Scrollable Navigation Bar:

It’s easy to think using a bottom navigation bar that’s lets users scroll through all the important destination is your solution (if you have more than 5). But, it’s not!

More often than not, users don’t realize the navigation bar has the option to scroll and never see the features that side of the screen.

3. Consistency:

By using icons that are this consistent you clearly communicate to the user that you’re a professional who cares about user experience at far finer levels.

By being aware of them and by making them more consistent you bring the app closer to the heart of the users.

4. Avoid multiple colors:

Avoid using different colors for different icons as it may lead to confusion and users may fail to tell apart active destinations from in-active destinations. Use proper opacity to enhance the visibility of the icons.

The color scheme used on your bottom navigation bar should agree with the overall theme of your app. The icons and text labels for active and inactive destinations must have a distinct contrast.

5. Don’t truncate or wrap texts:

Text labels should give quick and meaningfully explanations to navigation icons. Avoid long text labels as they do not cut short or wrap.

Conclusion

For providing the perfect user experience, you need to put a lot of ideas into your bottom navigational bar. And, yes, there should always be a bottom navigational bar, if you want to make the app easy to use for your users.

The bottom navigational bar should be designed in such a way that its:

1. Simple: it should lead to where it says it would!
2. Clear: the tabs are recognizable and easy to tap.
3. Well picked: choose only the features that enhance UX.

Making it easier for users to navigate through the app should be the highest preference for an app’s design.

The simpler your app is to use, the more likely it’ll be used.