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The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

deep.design

51–60 of 192 posts

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#51
post #33

James Archer, author of the piece, is Chief Creative Officer of both Crowd Favorite, and Forty, both of which use -- surprise -- the hamburger menu in their mobile sites. Is this another case of "do what I say, not what I do"?

It's in the queue. :) The Crowd Favorite site is in the process of being redesigned, and there'll be changes to the Forty site coming shortly after that.

(These changes aren't just because of the hamburger menu, obviously. Digital stuff moves pretty fast in general, and companies keep evolving.)

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#52

> As a last-ditch attempt to solve the problem, they made it yellow Amazing! I could almost write a script for the meeting in which that solution was decided upon. Rough sketch: Idea is proposed by one individual at level N in the hierarchy. Some cursory justification is provided, based on theory from a design article they read, they think, or maybe it was a youtube video - doesn't matter: Yellow attracts attention!…

Or in a less jaded view, they decided to try a very low cost fix before pulling the trigger on a very expensive site navigation redesign. Or, even better, this showed a partial improvement while they worked on the navigation redesign since "turn it yellow" takes 2 seconds and redesign the navigation takes much longer.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#53

It is almost always preferable to have all of your options available to the user at all times. However, it's very important to make the distinction between apps and websites when talking about a hamburger menu. A tab bar is great in an iOS app with a limited scope of functionality. That just doesn't work a sprawling news site covering dozens of topics. A small, product-focused website may even be able to get away wit…

In the article, it shows NBC News, which is "a sprawling news site covering dozens of topics".

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#54
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the new world case of 'I sold you solution X, now it's time for solution Y'.

I'm waiting for 'flat' design to be passé, myself.

I find a lot of web design to be choosing the least bad among a bunch of bad options. I find 'flat' designs to be the least bad in most situations.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#55
In my apps I generally use the Hamburger menu to hide stuff that's required but not used very often. (Settings, legal agreements etc..) Since engagement is lower for these things anyway it allows you to have them there if needed without cluttering the main content that should be the focus.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#56

Before hamburger menus became popular, weren't people complaining about the exact opposite problem? That is, if you break out the menu items into more prominent interface elements (e.g., tab bar items), then you're at risk of cluttering your visual design with less-common functions. As in all things design, I suppose a balance needs to be found, but I personally don't find anything wrong with a hamburger menu per se.…

> I personally don't find anything wrong with a hamburger menu per se.

The trouble, which the article describes with some case studies on engagement before and after hamburger menu implementations, is that people who are not you are confused by it and don't understand it to be a menu.

fwiw, I've encountered this quite a bit when helping users switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox or Chrome -- both of which use the stupid hamburger menu -- an users hate it and "being able to find things" is probably the number one reported reason that they go back to Internet Explorer.

ed: for a more specific example, look at Firefox or Chrome, try really hard to imagine that you are a first time user of that web browser, but you've used IE before, and then figure out how to do one of the most common things that people want to do with a web browser: bookmark a page.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#57

It is almost always preferable to have all of your options available to the user at all times. However, it's very important to make the distinction between apps and websites when talking about a hamburger menu. A tab bar is great in an iOS app with a limited scope of functionality. That just doesn't work a sprawling news site covering dozens of topics. A small, product-focused website may even be able to get away wit…

I keep reading these articles about how awful hamburgers are but so far not a single one addresses menus that have more than 3-5 items. I manage sites that we have kicked around ideas for how to deal with the menu better, but the size of what is in that menu makes all the proposed ideas I've seen not feasible. So I'm right there with you that it is unfortunate, I wish these articles had more in way of solutions than…

In retrospect, I should have clarified what I meant by recommending the 3- to 5-item menu in the article; I was assuming the need to consolidate the menu to that many items on mobile, even if it wasn't so consolidated on larger views. There many need to be a "junk drawer" as others here have mentioned, or maybe those secondary items rely on navigation in the content itself.

I think the best practice might be to pare down the navigation to the most important items, so at least those have visibility in a mobile context. However, these are still new design patterns being established, so nobody really has solid answers yet.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#58
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's almost always a better way to present it to the user. If I'm viewing a news site, I'm not going to think that the hamburger menu is where I go to find the Lifestyle section. If you absolutely must hide your sections behind a menu, there are practically infinite different menus that make more sense. The hamburger menu only makes sense when it's the literal junk drawer of the app/site, when there's no possi…

> If I'm viewing a news site, I'm not going to think that the hamburger menu is where I go to find the Lifestyle section. Well, if there is such a menu, where else would it be?

Practically anywhere else. If I really wanted to find it, I'd probably eventually click that hamburger menu, but the only place that I'd be even less likely to look for it is the footer of the page.

In a mobile app it makes a lot more sense, because screen space is so limited and the hamburger button will occupy one of the prime navigation points in the app UI (typically the upper-left or upper-right navigation button slots), so there's obviously not very many possibilities to find something, but even there, if you can possibly avoid using it, you should. As the original article demonstrates, hiding your navigational elements, even on mobile apps, significantly reduces user engagement.

In a desktop website, I can't think of any reason why I would ever use a hamburger menu. Other, more specific menus, sure (e.g. "Sections" in a news site). But if I see the hamburger menu, besides thinking that it's really out of place when not in a mobile app, I also will instantly assume that it's the place to find things that I probably will never need. Basically, if it's something that you might put in the footer of your site, then hiding it in a hamburger is fine. If you think it's something that enough users will want such that the footer would be inappropriate, then don't put it behind a hamburger either.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You put the most important menu items in a tab bar. If you really, really need the other junk, hide the long tail of menu items in a "more" tab.

I agree that sometimes that works really well. Still, for some apps/websites there is really only one obvious and important function. In those cases, a tab bar would just be putting "the other junk" in a more important place than it should be. There will always be a conflict in design between minimalism and functionality. The hamburger menu just happens to be prime territory upon which that battle is fought.

There's always an exception, but your app probably isn't one of them.
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