[gopher1]

First off, two of their "studies" simply compared the hamburger icon to different types of icons, but the functionality remained the same (slide out). Only one looked at changing the navigation entirely.

Second, this is not so much a reflection of fly-out/slide-out navigations as it is a reflection of the fact that on mobile you just have less screen real estate period. Nowhere in that article is there a real reckoning with that fact.

I've yet to be convinced that fly-out/slide-out/hamburger navigations are worse than the alternative when you have lots of items to display. Either way you're not going to be displaying something, and whatever is not immediately visible will receive reduced engagement. If your home page/screen is full of navigation items, something else will be hidden instead.

Not to mention the article provides solution for cases that have many navigation items - something that is very common.

[jakejake]

I kinda thought the same thing. Finding the perfect navigation can be a huge challenge for larger apps. Though I agree with the article that it's important to analyze and be critical of your app structure as much as possible.

As far as the article mentioning user engagement stats, it probably matters a lot what the point of the app is. If you're trying to get a social app off the ground and your users literally will not spend 15 seconds learning to use it - you have to put everything in their face. If you're making a vertical market app or something where the users need it to do actual work - they might appreciate a quick, single-click access to a large menu vs clicking through multiple levels of tabs.

[mortenjorck]

The article's citation of the Twitter app is one I'd call a fine example of a UI that could benefit from a side drawer. Twitter has completely overloaded two of their four bottom tabs: First, the Timelines tab has several horizontally-navigated views that are spatially disorienting when positioned against the tab layout and feel conceptually muddy under the "Timelines" category. Second, the "Me" tab is also home to tangentially-related functionality such as searching for users and help, and has its own often confusing navigation that might be better expressed in a consistently laid-out side drawer.