Having good navigation will drastically increase the usability of the product and reinforce the features it offers. Having sub-par navigation will make it frustrating for people. It doesn’t affect how users experience the product, but it might abandon the product in general. This is the sort of thing that is subtle but can make or break the experience.

Hand and finger positioning

People’s fingers aren’t the same size, but every single one of your customers should be able to use your app. Nobody wants to waste time by trying to tap on an icon or a button repeatedly and not being able to get anywhere. It’s frustrating, distractive, and can ruin the carefully planned experience.

Hamburger menu

With such a limited amount of real estate to play with, the hamburger menu is a method of hiding more elaborate navigation so users can enjoy more screen space. The minimum elements inside of the hamburger menu should be 44px. Distinguishing the drawer that expands is crucial for usability. If you have the drawer the same color as the app’s background, try darkening the interface underneath the drawer.

Tap bar navigation

There are two tab bars that you can use, and each of them has its benefits and disadvantages. If you decide to go the route with icons only – they need to be crystal clear what do they mean as people don’t have time to think and interpret what it means behind it or what it will be hidden. Adding a label makes it much clearer than icons only; however, it slightly increases the tab bar, which is a good sacrifice fi you want to have great usability.

Contextual navigation

Contextual navigation is all the links inside of your content. This can be hashtags, categories, usernames, which would help users lead to a detailed page of that metadata. If needed, you can also use this in a long block of text, but be mindful how people will interact with your product.