Member-only story
Designing Side Panels That Add Value to Your Website’s UX
Best practices and use cases for effective side panel design
Side panels are exactly what they sound like: a panel on one side of a screen. They typically contain secondary navigation, contextual information, or additional tools that are related to the primary content on the page. The side panel usually remains hidden until the user activates it through a button or mobile gesture, making it a non-intrusive user interface (UI) element that can provide valuable information or functionality without distracting from the primary content.
In this article, we’ll break down the panel design pattern and talk about some best practices and common mistakes to avoid when using side panels in your designs.
Side panel use cases
Side panels can help users complete tasks more efficiently, as they can access useful information or a navigation menu. However, it’s important to use your best judgment to ensure that you don’t overwhelm the user with the side panel or distract them from the main content of the page.
1. Navigation
Side panels are a great way to help users navigate through a website or application by providing quick links to important sections. For example, a blog might have a side panel that contains links to popular categories like “Recipes,” “Health and Wellness,” and “Lifestyle” with additional sublinks under each section. This allows users to easily find the content that interests them without having to search through the entire website.
Slack is a good example of an application that uses a side panel for navigation. The top section of the panel includes general links such as “Unreads” and “Threads”, while the sections below group channels and messages together. Each section in the side panel is collapsible to allow for flexibility in what is shown. The panel can also be closed or resized to the user’s preference.
