A sidebar that only shows what you are working on
KantaHub's old sidebar listed every module's pages at once, with 20 items in Accounting alone. Here is the two-level navigation that replaced it, and the rules we kept.
Operations software does a lot. KantaHub covers reception, the lab itself, quality control, samples, accounting and administration. For a long time its sidebar listed all of it at once. Every user saw every module's pages, whatever they were doing. Accounting alone had 20 items.
Two levels instead of one long list
On 22 September we rebuilt it as two levels.
- On the home screen the sidebar is short: Home, Admin and Integrations. It is not a copy of every module's page list.
- Inside a workspace such as Reception, LIMS or Accounting, the sidebar shows only that workspace's pages, with a "Home" row at the top to go back.
- Long modules are grouped. Accounting's 20 items sit under Billing, Pricing and catalog, Ledger and Reports. One group is open at a time, and the group holding the page you are on always opens by itself.
Rules we kept
- One way to reach each page. A page gets a sidebar entry or an in-page tab, never both. When we audited the lab overview, five of its eight stage pills only repeated pages the sidebar already had. We removed them.
- One search. The home page has no second search box. Ctrl+K opens the one search that every page uses.
- The home screen cannot drift from the sidebar. A module card appears only if its sidebar would have items for that user, so a card never leads to an empty menu.
Splitting what was hiding navigation
On 25 September we found the same problem in one more place. Quality control and sample management shared one sidebar group with two links, each opening a page that hid its real navigation in tabs: nine for QC, five for samples. We split them into two workspaces. Each now has a full sidebar and every page is one click away.
What it means if you design software like this
A long menu is a sign that the software is showing its structure instead of the user's task. Show people the work they are in, and make everything else one step away. A page that can be reached two ways is usually one way too many.