How do you pick the right function to be in the bottom menu?

Question

Im currently designing a student portal mobile application. It got a lot of functions; 1. frequently used (academic, timetable, assignments) 2. seldom used (fees, library) and 3. others that are not applicable to all students (counselling, international students, visa).

I could not figure out the categorisation of functions and where they should belong.

1. I plan to have the bottom menu for management (dashboard, timetable, fees, notification, menu).
2. Then, maybe have shortcut buttons in dashboard for academic, library, hostel. This shortcut is for big functions that have have a lot of features and integration in the future. Example in library, user can search for books, reserve and pay fines.
3. And the less important ones to be placed in menu (menu in bottom navigation > sidebar).

Or would you guys suggest functions to be categorised based on usage frequency? or maybe theres other factors to be considered?

I really appreciate your help. Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

Consider running a card-sorting or similar exercise to determine how your users group the information and why. Also, if the school has a current portal, check any analytics data to see what is visited most often or searched for. Combining these 2 approaches will yield a big chunk of learnings to inform your design decisions.

Answer 2

If you can share more about categories or list them, it is a little difficult to rightly suggest without categorizing the features.

But the basic logic remains same. 1) Categorize the interaction that can be put up together. 2) There is always a progressive feature grouping that can be done for future needs or addons.