Can the navigation on the Dashboard of an app be different from other pages?

Question

So, we are having an argument in our company regarding the navigation. On the Dashboard, the user sees a Hamburger menu in the left upper corner and his profile picture, username, notifications icon and a Logout button in the right upper corner and the Dashboard contains cards, each one leading to a specific page.

All good till here, but when the user enters a specific page, the hamburger button disappears and the navigation bar becomes a bar with all the subsections listed on it, plus the Dashboard icon, the user profile pic, name and Logout button. This navigation is present all over the app, but not on the Dashboard.

Should the navigation be specific the same, all over the app?

Answer 1

Whether it's the hamburger menu or the menu bar, navigation should be consistent throughout your system.

This features throughout most accessibility guidelines, is good for SEO, and is just generally good practice.

Answer 2

A dashboard is a very different UI than an application, so there is an argument that the navigation can be different. For example, the features are different, the purpose and goals are different, so what works for one might not work for the other.

Consistency comes with advantages, so as a general rule of thumb the consistency argument should trump everything, assuming consistency makes sense (sometimes it doesn't).

Answer 3

Changing the top bar navigation by page is a problem. The user needs to feel safe and always be able to find their way home if is necessary without clicking too much. If you start changing navigation patterns per page at some point the user is going to loose track.

Example: all google products, Facebook, Jira, stack exchange. They are all keeping the same pattern.

You can get away with this if the page shows some kind of hierarchy design and is minimal. Also is ok to have a submenu bar under the main menu too

That's my opinion