Does the side navigation in the context of a page feel interactive to a user?

[sukhrajghuman]

Feature Request

• [x] I’ve read and understood the Contributing guidelines and have done my best effort to follow them.
• [x] I’ve read and agree to the Code of Conduct.
• [x] I’ve searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.
• [x] I've searched the community forums to check for related issues or feature requests

Is this feature request relating to an existing component? Please describe.

• Component name: Side Nav
• Component version: 4.0.0

I feel the links should be underlined. It was hard for me to tell that they were links until i hovered over them. Is there a reason for non underlined links?

Could be worth investigating pros and cons for both approaches.

With underlines:

---

Without underlines:

[sukhrajghuman]

i think underlines with a slightly muted underline could work

[alex-page]

We discussed this thoroughly when designing them. I recommend reading the thread on discourse and talking to treb. The reasons were the lines and borders together where too much cognitive load for a user. The list pattern with borders and location on page we felt were enough.

[sukhrajghuman]

The reasons were the lines and borders together where too much cognitive load for a user

Yea i agree with this. And this makes sense when you look at the component in isolation. However when on a full page with text, there should be a way to distinguish between body text and links. Right now it's the same.

What about changing the links in side nav to have use the foreground action colour, and using normal body text colour for the active item. This follows similar pattern to breadcrumbs

[alex-page]

I think we should leave this open for a while for community input. I will make a post in the community.

The discussion should be centred around:

Does the side navigation in the context of a page feel interactive to a user?

[laurenburley]

How do you propose this works on mobile? It seems all of the DTA components have not been designed mobile first. Mobile seems to be an afterthought, which is unfortunate as we should all know by now, mobile web consumption outranks desktop year on year. The proposed nav and how it works on mobile is fairly lackluster and I dare say does not conform to the mental model people typically have for interacting with a mobile navigation.

[alex-page]

@laurenburley Feel free to contribute with any ideas on how to make the mobile experience better. The team is always open to feedback.

[gordongrace]

Hi @laurenburley - thanks for taking the time to comment.

It seems all of the DTA components have not been designed mobile first.

Before being considered for inclusion in the Australian Government Design System, a component does need to pass a series of tests. Responsiveness and suitability for mobile / small screen devices is one part of the test battery. Responsiveness also forms part of the Digital Service Standard.

mobile web consumption outranks desktop year on year.

No question.

The proposed nav and how it works on mobile is fairly lackluster

We try to ensure components' defaults are accessible, functional and unobtrusive. "Luster" wasn't something we've been prioritising ;) .

I dare say does not conform to the mental model people typically have

If you've got a specific improvement to suggest in the form of code, screenshots, screen captures, designs, research findings, prototypes, I'd encourage you to either add them to this GitHub ticket, raise a new ticket highlighting the specific issue you're having, or start a thread on the community forum.

Constructive criticism is always welcomed by the core team and the community. It helps us (and the system) improve.