Navigation rules for bottom tab bar

Question

I'm working on a mobile app which has a bottom navigation bar. There are 3 tabs:

• Payments
• Home
• Settings

When I am on the home section I have a menu, where I can go deeper, inside this section:

• Payments
• Home -> Screen A -> Screen B
• Settings

On Screen B there is a button make payment which should open a Make payment page.

This payment page also accessible from Payments tab:

• Payments -> Make Payment
• Home
• Settings

So there are two approaches:

Open Make Payment inside Home tab:

• Payments
• Home -> Screen A -> Screen B -> Make Payment

• Settings

  Open Make Payment inside Payments tab e.g. switch tab from Home to Payments

• Payments -> Make Payment

• Home -> Screen A -> Screen B
• Settings

So what approach is better? First one - keeps navigation stack and context as well. The second one is more logical from domain standpoint because the payment screen is under payment tab.

Are there guidelines/rules for such cases? What would you recommend?

Answer 1

I just wonder if you can't do both? I mean, opening payments from both your solution while keeping the user inside the same path that they used to come here.

Exemple : Homepage => A => B => payment process => User finish payment => B

AND

Payments => payment process => User finish payment => Payment

(Of course, when user finish to pay, don't hesitate to implement a visual feedback saying "Thank you, everything is alright!" or something close to that)

According to self-determination theory ( http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/ ), people need to feel autonomy and competent while doing an activity (using an app is included)).

If you choose to "move" your users from home => A => B to Payment after they completed the payment process, they'll be most probably lost (Feeling of competency going down).

If you choose to let your user use as they wish this part of your app (paying and then going back to the page they were before, meaning B or Payment depending on how they arrived here) they will feel like you let them use the app as they want.

I'm having the same question in my work and that's how I decided to solve it, because I'm feared that my users can be lost in the process of "Ok you were on B remember? Now you're on Payment".