Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

deep.design

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 192 posts

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#91

Post by ams6110 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #78
TheTravCav wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people who are not you are confused by it and don't understand it This is the history of computers and users. So many technologies that seem completely intuitive now started out just like this. being confused by it and don't understand it is only a problem if stays that way like shortcut key combos. Hamburger menus are like "right click". it's not that bad and when people have seen it a few times it won't be some co…

People still don't understand right click. Hate to break this to you. UI that isn't clear and visible on the screen is unhelpful UI.

They don't understand double click either. I know people who double click everything - buttons, hyperlinks, everything.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#92

Post by dperfect »

sandofsky wrote: post #84
dperfect wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, you are an atypical user. You also don't work for Facebook, so you don't have insight into all their priorities. Facebook is a data-driven company. They've publicly discussed the process that resulted in the current tab bar design. In initial tests, they saw a drop in newsfeed views; they solved it by badging the newsfeed tab when new content arrives. Requests get their own tab because adding friends to your net…

No argument here about Facebook's priorities or being data-driven. I don't doubt any of what you're saying.

Still, as a user I don't care if data suggests that it's in Facebook's best interest to require a separate app for messages (and keeping around a tab that does absolutely nothing in the current app). I'm sure that is better for their business, at least in the short run. But from a user experience design perspective, I'll probably never see that as better design.

Littering your app with ads may be great for business, but I wouldn't consider ads in an app to be "great design" in general. I fully understand that design is meant to serve a purpose - usually the interests of a business, but I'd draw a line when it comes at the expense of frustrating your users (and no, I'm not atypical in my frustration with Facebook).

That philosophy is at the core of what's killing Facebook. My opinion, as always, so take it or leave it.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#93

Post by quinndupont »

declan wrote: post #19

My co-founder and I debated whether to use the hamburger menu for our iOS and Android apps (currently in beta -- https://recent.io/ ). We decided to keep the hamburger menu on both platforms for launch. Our reasoning was that it's a common UI convention and our primary navigation options -- Home, Recommended, Hot News, Local News, and topics -- are visible in the extended app bar. An option to follow additional topic…

This is a really important point. While the article makes several strong conceptual points, the metrics won't necessarily stand the test of time. There's nothing particularly "natural" about design, so anything that becomes habitual and conventional is part of "good" design. If the hamburger lives on we won't think twice about it, like we no longer think about that stupid "gears" icon for "settings" and the very idea of a windowed UI.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#94

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#95

Post by Numberwang »

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…

For bigger menus I like how it is implemented here under the 'Mer' section:

http://www.idg.se/

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#96

Post by function_seven »

ams6110 wrote: post #91
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still don't understand right click. Hate to break this to you. UI that isn't clear and visible on the screen is unhelpful UI.

They don't understand double click either. I know people who double click everything - buttons, hyperlinks, everything.

Yeah, me too. And its amusingly frustrating to watch. And we know why double-clicking is a thing, and why it's not consistent across widgets, but I wonder if we'd be better off if the mouse originated not with "left" and "right" buttons, but instead "do" and "select" buttons. The Do button would open the files and visit the hyperlinks, the Select button would add the object you're looking at to a stack of selections, or provide more information about the thing you're pointing at, or some other lower-cost action.

(I just changed the setting on my desktop to use single-click-to-open, and was immediately punished by it. Couldn't merely select files anymore without fear :) )

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#97

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#98

Post by [deleted] »

abalone wrote: post #86

It's very interesting that Apple just adopted a hamburger menu for their apple.com redesign (mobile version). They even told everyone not to use hamburger menus at last year's WWDC! [1] [1] WWDC 2014 Session 211 Designing Intuitive User Experiences @ 32:00, available here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/ Addendum: It's a responsive design so you can see this even on a desktop browser just by shrinking t…

[deleted]

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#99

Post by rrrx3 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #78
TheTravCav wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people who are not you are confused by it and don't understand it This is the history of computers and users. So many technologies that seem completely intuitive now started out just like this. being confused by it and don't understand it is only a problem if stays that way like shortcut key combos. Hamburger menus are like "right click". it's not that bad and when people have seen it a few times it won't be some co…

People still don't understand right click. Hate to break this to you. UI that isn't clear and visible on the screen is unhelpful UI.

Depends on the user group and the context you're designing for. Only so-called "novice users" struggle with right click. Intermediate to advanced users are well versed in it. The former user group is dwindling by the day.

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/feature-richness-and-user-en...

This also falls under the "myth of the stupid user." http://infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources/articles/themyth...

Be very careful about conflating the two issues. Usability studies have shown that users struggle with inappropriately labelled hamburger menus. Usability studies have also shown that users of intermediate to advanced skill do not struggle with right click. One is an issue regarding appropriate labelling and visual affordance, and the other is one of system and hardware affordances.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#100

Post by rch »

I think of it as the 'menu of last resort', that should never be a primary navigation element. In that sense it works just fine.

I might also refer to it as the 'vent', since it seems to heat up after a few months of not restarting my browser.

Post reply on HN