Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I like the sausage link concept because it clearly labels options with text. 100%. I'm kinda surprised how the 3 lines hamburger menu got so prevalent in the first place, because it always user tests poorly. My guess is that when flat minimalism (my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean) was the rage, even though user t…
Not quite, the usage of lines are still conveying something, it's similar to pause, play, stop on media players, it's similar to back, forward and refresh icons on the browser. Line based symbols are easy to pick up and have been picked up by users from our testing, I'm really not sure what studies you're referring to (?) For an actual shitty example, look at Macos window button controls. Red yellow and green circles…
The hamburger has no such lineage. It started as a menu icon and changed slightly but no one had any idea what even the initial icon meant without an explanation that it's a list.