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The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

deep.design

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Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#61

Post by jamesarcher »

natch wrote: post #23

I was inclined to dismiss this author's view on mobile design since they were saying "click" this and "click" that everywhere. On mobile, there is no clicking. Clicking is for when you have a mouse. On mobile there's tapping. But. That being said, the article makes sense. Hamburger menus are where features go to die. So if you want a feature used, I agree it should be brought forward in a different way.

I definitely struggle with that wording issue, since there are a variety of devices and interaction methods that make it difficult to write about without the language getting cumbersome. :) "Click" seems to be the most commonly-accepted term for initiating a request for the browser to load a URI based on a hyperlink, so I went with that as a general term.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#62

Post by snuxoll »

WorldMaker wrote: post #42

One of the things that I felt Windows Phone 7 and 8/8.1 in their design language did well was encouraging designs that were better than the hamburger (pivots and sprawling "hubs" that encourage you to explore in two dimensions; app-bars with ellipses). It's interesting to see Hamburger menus bleeding back into the design language with Windows 10. It seems a strange, sad concession to meeting Android/iOS designs and e…

As someone who has been using Windows Phone devices since WP7 was launched the hamburger button making an appearance makes me just shake my head in disgust. To an extent Microsoft has been making reasonable use of it, in Outlook it's particularly nice since I no longer need to expand the app bar to get to my folder list - but I fear the signaling it may be giving 3rd party designers, that they can get away with mystery meat navigation and ruin one of the better parts of the Windows Phone UX.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#63

Post by davnicwil »

aero142 wrote: post #52
davnicwil wrote: post #12

> 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.

I like how this reads as jaded, was actually just an attempt at a bit of humour! Of course I agree with everything you said, that's probably what it actually was.

I've still not learned, probably never will, that tone rarely comes across in text :-)

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#64

Post by CognitiveLens »

eridius wrote: post #45
CognitiveLens wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "infinite different menus that make more sense" This a a little hyperbolic. If you want surface a link to the Lifestyle section, then you also have to accept that links to about a dozen other sections need to be visible as well - on mobile, this would lead to about a third of the visible page (or more) being consumed by navigation links. Alternatively, you put the nav at the bottom of the page, but I would argue th…

You seem to have completely missed the entire point of my comment. In no way am I saying that a news site needs to have a link "Lifestyle" visible to the user at all times. In fact, you quoted directly from the most relevant point, the bit that says that there are practically infinite different ways to design a menu that avoids the problem of the hamburger. As a trivial example, you could have a single menu labelled…

> You seem to have completely missed the entire point of my comment

This is a little hyperbolic. You've basically recommended a labeled hamburger menu - 'Sections' instead of 'Menu' - and text labels definitely have a demonstrable advantage over icon-only buttons, but the OP isn't advocating for text labels instead of the hamburger icon (see NBC example that had a labeled hamburger menu originally), it's proposing that the menu items be surfaced into tabs, segmented controls, and lists. That's not viable on sites with a flat structure.

nytimes.com uses the hamburger icon with the 'Sections' label, as you suggest, but it's important to acknowledge that this is just a variation on the theme, not a complete rejection of the 'menu items hidden behind something else' principle, so we need to be precise about the problems that a hamburger menu can and can't solve.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#65

Post by dperfect »

sandofsky wrote: post #60
dperfect wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of curiosity I just opened up Facebook on my iPhone (mentioned in the article as a good example).

The tab bar has 5 items: News Feed, Requests, Messages, Notifications, and More. I'm in the News Feed 99% of the time. Requests and Notifications are pretty much redundant (since requests become notifications) and could easily be put somewhere else - maybe nav/title bar. Messages is completely useless - just shows me a button to install a different app that I don't care about (of course that's "better for metrics", but not better for users). And "More"... well that's a standard hamburger menu, and frankly the only thing that needs to be there in my opinion.

Maybe I'm an atypical user, but that experience seems to be the case in a lot of tabbed apps.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#66

Post by davidkatz »

nthj wrote: post #31
shampine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Somewhere along the way I realized that design skill has as much to do with making convincing business cases for simplifying your business offering as it does with what design patterns we use. Approached this way, these types of articles help in the same way software design patterns do: perhaps refactoring the code will improve the smell, but its also possible we have an unnecessarily complex business problem ("50 mo…

This is an important point. You contribute most as a designer when you control or influence whatever is necessary to get to good design. In most cases, the largest levers of influence are not in which design patterns you use, but in the business decisions that make things simple or complex.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#67

Post by bhauer »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #56
dperfect wrote: post #36

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…

> 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.

Even as a routine Firefox user, I never use the "hamburger menu." Instead, to reach functions not visible on my toolbar, I just press Alt to reveal the traditional drop-down menus and use those.

I still remember when I first heard someone call the three-line button a "hamburger." Variations had been around for some time, and I think people generally called it a "list" or "menu" button. I personally thought it looked like a thumb grip, so when it appeared on mobile as something you could grab and slide, for a while I called it a grip. The name "hamburger" has never resonated with me. So admittedly part of my disdain for the hamburger is simply the new name.

I am generally in favor of the article's argument, especially in large-display contexts such as desktop computing. As much as I can appreciate the visual minimalism of mobile designs, it can feel frustrating and constraining to navigate a mobile design in a large-display context.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#68

Post by latortuga »

dperfect wrote: post #36

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.…

The title of the article is "The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work" not "The Hamburger Menu Is Bad". Not only that, they present actual evidence about it not working for a number of apps and websites.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#69

Post by nevir »

shampine wrote: post #17
freshyill wrote: post #6

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…

> 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.

One approach is to build a hierarchy

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