In 2016 I introduced a design pattern into my work that I still believe is one of the most under utilised interface elements. The sidebar.
I first noticed this idea in Gmail and later in Office. Both products used a fixed panel on the right to bring in tools like calendar or tasks without disturbing the main content. It was clean, contextual and it kept people in flow. I thought it was a smart solution but when I tried to apply the same idea to other products I met resistance. That resistance still exists today.
What I built was simple. Using Angular we structured the page so that the main content lived on the left and remained responsive, while a fixed width sidebar sat on the right and could slide in and out. The layout stayed intact. The sidebar became a utility space that could support different needs without forcing people to leave the page they were on.
The first use case was chat. If you were filling in a form or browsing content and needed support you could open a conversation without losing the context of the page. This solved a real frustration. At the time chat usually appeared in a popup window, a modal covering your content or even a new browser tab. All of these broke the experience. With the sidebar the conversation lived beside your task.
Once it was working I realised the same pattern applied to many other flows. Sign in did not need to take you to a new page, you could complete it in the sidebar and continue where you were. In ecommerce the cart was the perfect use. You could review, update and check out while still navigating the store. It was flexible, contextual and required no break in the journey.
We first implemented it in a concept site in 2017 and in 2018 I demoed a vision video to the execs at Nedbank showing how it could transform product interactions. From there I kept applying it to different products including EVO, Fluint and Healthbridge, adapting it to suit the context. These were not just experiments in isolation but features shipped into real products.
At the same time my instincts were being validated. Google and Microsoft were expanding their sidebars into multi tab utility panels, giving people everything from mail and calendar to tasks and notes in the same persistent space. They were proving at scale what I was already exploring in my own projects.
Of course resistance never went away. Many designers and product managers were uncomfortable because it broke the established patterns they were used to. My view was straightforward. If two of the largest online platforms in the world Gmail and Outlook could normalise the sidebar then we could too.
When OpenAI demoed their Atlas browser I was delighted to see them use a sidebar to enable live conversation with AI while browsing the web. This is the kind of potential I saw years ago.
One of my early visions was in the home loan journey. Imagine being midway through an application, getting stuck, and opening the sidebar to chat with support. Not only could they talk to you, they could also load the exact screen you were on in the left panel, so the help was directly contextual. At the time engineers gave me mixed feedback on whether that was technically feasible, but with advances in AI and contextual awareness it now feels within reach.
Looking back I was early in pushing this approach. Looking forward I believe it still holds huge value. A responsive content area on the left. A fixed width slide in sidebar on the right. It solves real problems, reduces friction and creates space for features exactly where you need them.