information architecture does tell us that people have to be much more engaged to navigate with more choices, and that 7 is about the top-end of what people will really process. 3 is your lowest engagement upper limit, people already need to be moderately engaged to process 5 choices, and they need to be really focused for 7. These principles apply to people focused on using a computer with a large screen in front of their face, and surely degrade on smaller devices with distractions around.
if you have a shit-ton of navigation items, get rid of some, because having fourteen is _not_ increasing engagement.
Sometimes, in the real world, clients want things a certain way and you are paid to make them that way. I would like less navigation options, but a big app has multiple things. That's just a fact of life sometimes - regardless of information architecture theory.
if you have a shit-ton of navigation items, get rid of some, because having fourteen is _not_ increasing engagement.