What justifies a full page modal navigation?

Question

What arguments support having a full page modal acting as a hub that takes you to different actions / pages that are linked together?

For instance imagine an app where you manage recipes, you would have a button opening a modal menu with:

• View list of recipes
• Add a new recipe
• View list of ingredients
• Add an ingredient
• Manage food orders
• Create a new food order
• Manage food preferences

This is completely fake.

My client tends to want modals everywhere. I get the feeling this initial button should rather lead to a "space" on the website about all the above, with a vertical menu giving you access to all these things.

I'm struggling to find arguments one way or the other. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Modals are used to force attention and focus the user on a single task. I have not seen full-page modals used for website navigation because the user often needs to know where they are in addition to where they want to go.

In high-stakes applications where lives or health might be threatened by mistakes from lack of attention (think car touchscreens), a full-screen nav that minimizes distractions is a good idea. But if I'm making brownies and my hands are covered in flour and I need to know what to do next and I'm going to add an ingredient and... the nav interrupts me? I'd test that with some real-time users.