The admin dashboard design hasn’t changed significantly since the MP6 plugin was merged into WordPress 3.8 in 2013. This project brought updated typography and improved contrast to the admin but didn’t tackle the increasing complexity of admin navigation.

The major changes included in this proposal include the following:

• Flyout menus are replaced with accordion behavior. This scales all the way from mobile to desktop, and affords better accessibility.
• Menu is made 80px wider (240px vs. 160), affording a 14px minimum font size for all items, perhaps bigger icons in the future, more relaxed spacing, enhancing usability and accessibility.
• Sidebar is grouped in major sections, “Site”, “Design”, “Tools” and “Manage”.
• “Updates” are moved to a subsection of “Manage”, making Home a single item.
• Items related to content on your site (such as “Posts” and “Pages”) are moved under “Site”.
• Clicking major menu items just opens or closes the accordion, as opposed to go directly to the first subsection. This unifies the mobile and desktop behavior. You can keep the accordion open if you use it all the time (each click will save state, so you’ll see the same open/closed sections upon page refresh).
• All “Settings” subsections are moved under “Manage”, along with “Plugins & Blocks” and “Users”.
• Separators group major categories, like “Site” and “Design” together
• Dashboard is renamed “Home”, because all of WordPress is a Dashboard, and “Home” is where you can get an overview at a glance.

This proposal already shows a lot of promise but needs more feedback and participation from diverse user groups across the WordPress community.