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The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

deep.design

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Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#171

Post by kagamine »

jalfresi wrote: post #82
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…

I'm gonna sound like an old fart now (mostly because I am) but back in the late 90s we used to have a discipline called Information Architecture that existed to handle exactly this case. You see, Information Architecture has more to do with capital D Design, not fad, bandwagons and styles. Its about solving this exact problem. I really hope the concept of User Experience dies in a fire so we can go back to real Desig…

Perhaps the term IxD (Interaction Design) would sit better with you than UX. IxD includes UX but also Info Architecture and has a lot more to do with structuring information before any 'design' takes place. In IxD you wouldn't normally touch on users or appearance (affordances for example is far off down the road at this point) before you sort out the "what is it?" and "what data?". It's very easy to start thinking about the users, too easy in fact, that many self-proclaimed 'UX-experts' focus on that and forget that 'content is still king' and it's presentation may actually attract users, so don't try to tailor shit to maggots when you can create a garden and attract bees.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#172

Post by kagamine »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #22
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…

> That just doesn't work a sprawling news site covering dozens of topics. Then have a menu named "topics" (or whatever marketing says to call areas of news). Still makes more sense than a menu whose icon means nothing more than "this is a menu" (and doesn't reliably convey that to everyone).

"topics" is also how untested, new fangled things like book stores and libraries work. People are also far more likely to side scroll menus on mobile. I'm not saying it's great design, but the option is there. ITunes store, that example of perfect design /s, uses side scrolling a lot too but it only really (half) works and only with the apple mouse.

I really hate hamburger menus on desktop because as you say, it only says "this is a menu". On mobile: navigation, on desktop (FF & Chrome) it means options. And then on Chrome they have tried to shoe-horn everything into a stupidly small pop-up where half the options are just links to open more options. It's hardly a step up from a menu bar.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#173

Post by turowicz »

emodendroket wrote: post #48

The neat thing about UI is that even bad designs eventually become the best ones as people get used to them and recognize them. The hamburger menu appears on a bazillion sites and it's going to be familiar to most users soon if it isn't already.

Exactly. As a user I don't mind them at all, as I recognise what they mean and know how to use them.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#175

Post by collyw »

abalone wrote: post #162
stirlo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Apple still has links at the bottom of the page for when the reader gets there. In fact the first link is "Shop & Learn" which expands out to be the same product listing as the Hamburger menu up the top.

So hamburger menus are ok as long as they're duplicated elsewhere? That would be kind of an odd rationale. Why have the hamburger in the first place?

No silly, hamburger menus are ok as long as Apple is doing them.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#176

Post by mercer »

abalone wrote: post #162
stirlo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Apple still has links at the bottom of the page for when the reader gets there. In fact the first link is "Shop & Learn" which expands out to be the same product listing as the Hamburger menu up the top.

So hamburger menus are ok as long as they're duplicated elsewhere? That would be kind of an odd rationale. Why have the hamburger in the first place?

To provide one convenient location for all the links you might find interesting. Like the Windows Start menu.

As an aside, not specifically in response to your comment: I find it fascinating that most clients I work with have an immediate dislike of duplication that doesn't seem to be based on any reasonable argument (at least from where I'm standing...).

For example, I've been in a number of situations where a client did not want a 'pricing' menu item and a 'check out plans/pricing' link somewhere on the page. The only argument they really had was that 'it would be confusing to the user'.

This argument doesn't make sense to me, as the average user will just kind of scroll around and if there's a logical point for them to check pricing, they would surely be appreciative rather than confused that there are multiple ways to get to the pricing page?

I can only conclude that it's one of those things where people think 'logically' and prefer some kind of clean hierarchy, rather than consider the end goal ('funnel the user to a particular page').

Or am I missing something important?

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#177

Post by mercer »

asgard1024 wrote: post #167

I hate the Nondescript Icon Movement. The Hamburger should die together with Three Dots, Angle Brackets and other geometric shapes that have a chutzpah to call themselves icons. Not to mention they killed the Tooltips! These things don't appear in the vacuum - the Hamburger Menu originated from the Celtic Knot Menu, which was originally at the end of the Ribbon. The Ribbon itself confused the use cases of the Menu an…

The three dots at least make a bit more sense in that it's been a common way to represent 'there will be a next step before this action is performed'.

I'm sure tons of people don't know about this - I remember it took me quite a while to realize that that's what the '...' represented in Windows/OSX menus - but at least with the dots people have had more than a decade of time to figure this out.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#178

Post by TuringTest »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #112

Here's the core question, is this a permanent or temporary problem? I remember back in the early years of the web (mid to late '90s) and one of the most important factors in designing websites was realizing that users don't scroll. They just didn't, and if your site design relied on that fact then you'd be screwed. But users learned to scroll, and now scrolling is perhaps the most important and most universal method…

The article tackles that:

"Some people argue that “we just have to wait for users to learn the new navigation convention,” but hopefully you can see how the principle of information scent invalidates that argument. [...] The problem wasn’t that users were confused by the hamburger menu, but rather that there was never a compelling reason to click it in the first place."

The principle of information scent is explained in the previous section:

"Most people navigation based on what’s called “information scent.” When faced with a set of options, they’ll choose the option that gives the strongest indication that it’ll bring them closer to what they want, like an animal sniffing around for food. [...] You know what never looks anything even close to what the user actually wants? A small three-bar icon tucked in the corner of a website. It has no information scent. Even after the user has exhausted every other option, it still might not occur to them that the answers they seek are hiding behind those three bars. Users generally aren’t inclined to click it."

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#179

Post by collyw »

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.…

As a software engineer who spends way too much time on front of a computer, I think it took me over a year to notice that a hamburger menu was a consistent user interface feature on phone apps and elsewhere.

Re: The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work

#180

Post by Kequc »

collyw wrote: post #179
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.…

As a software engineer who spends way too much time on front of a computer, I think it took me over a year to notice that a hamburger menu was a consistent user interface feature on phone apps and elsewhere.

I also am the person you describe. Once I figured out that it was a menu, and not that the world switched to a super-minimal feature-stripped interface for mobile websites. I never felt I liked it. I can click on tiny "Click [here]" links in the middle of a bunch of text on my phone. I can certainly click on a normal menu too. Then, I started to notice it in css frameworks. So, even I started to use it.

But, they were just such a pain. Every time. Trying to manipulate their behaviour even slightly was an exercise and in the end I was never happy with the result. I'm in full agreement that this interface should go away. I was happy to read the article and discover I haven't gone mad.

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