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.
Almost everything has or needs something like a hamburger menu somewhere. Can it be abused? Yes. Does that make it inherently bad? I don't think so.
> 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.
> 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.
It's also funny that on the desktop OS designed by Apple, that paragon of modern and superficially minimal design, the menu is always visible (in the menu bar, just for the focused application). Other desktops trying to be as "easy and beautiful" as OS X are doing more to hide the classic menu.
(not an apple fanboy, I promise, I've spent more time with linux overall)
Apple chose to always have an active menu at the top of the screen because of Fitts' law, which roughly says that bigger buttons can be clicked on more quickly than small ones (see wikipedia for a more precise mathematical description). Duh.
With the menu at the top, the user can slam the mouse pointer to the top edge, and simply focus on moving the pointer left of right. This is perceptually equivalent to having the screen divided into several tall stripes, one for each menu item. The menu items thus act like buttons with very large screen area.
On a small mobile device, this trick is used too: most of the UI buttons are on the edges of the display.
Compare this experience with trying to hit a tab or button on the top edge of your application's window (on a desktop computer). The top edge is rather narrow, and the targets sitting on that edge have small area. It takes much more effort to hit them, than if they were planted at the top of the screen.
From what I've read, Apple chose this design way back in the stone age era (early 1980s), after actually doing user testing!
> 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.
I confess I'd seen these for awhile before it dawned on me "you should totally click that!"
And today I learned what they're called.
As I saw the headline a few times at work, waiting to get home before I read it, I tried to imagine what a hamburger menu might be (and I never guessed it was what it is).
I imagined the menu at a hamburger store like McD's. And what most looks like that is the columns of small print links at the bottom of big kids' sites like Amazon. (And do those have a name?)
>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 confusing.
The trouble is that so many software developers in particular use this argument to justify every single silly notion they come up with. "Users just hate change, they'll get used to it and then they'll love it" is not a good engine for UI design.
1. the small screen version of big footer menus which conflict with infinite or long scroll on mobile.
2. The new "site map" menu, flash web sites loved where you dump the navigation of your pages hierarchically.
3. Another "design by committee" tool similar to carousel. As a designer you say "yes" to any navigation request and dump it under the carpet (hamburger)
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.
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.
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 :) )
Middle button (usually) on a three button mouse: Activate a menu to invoke an action concerting the contents of a window; e.g. carrying out an editing operation on text withing the window. (...)"
Right button on a three button mouse: Activate the menu or invoke an action concering the manipulation of the window (view / Morph) itself; e.g. moving or closing a window.
Shouldn't you also have a third button to list available actions, or would you throw that away? Overloading the select button would be just as confusing; I hope you don't want to do that.
You're right of course. At some point a trade off has to be made among usability, discover-ability, and simplicity. (Pick any two).
Adding another button reduces simplicity, but enhances the other two. Apple's one-button mouse—at the other extreme—makes things simple and discoverable, but often not as useable as I'd like. I still don't know how OSX's equivalent to Windows' [Alt] key access to menu items (does it exist?)
I do think using three buttons are good -- I'm not so happy with the classic "Xerox Parc/Smalltalk" layout -- I'd prefer to have a button on the thumb (like many logitech mice have) and a scroll-wheel in the middle that's not a button.
Which leaves us with a bit of a problem for touch screens. While it might be ok to demand users to learn one and two-finger touch -- three finger touch might be going a bit too far...
I used to use an MX Revolution mouse[1] that had what you describe. Multiple thumb buttons, that amazing flywheel scroll wheel, that other thumb wheel. I loved that mouse.
Unfortunately I love trackballs more than mice now, and am severely limited in my choices. The Trackman is nice, and has a couple of extra buttons, but it would be so nice to have something close to what I had with that Revolution mouse.
In response to your comment above, no I wasn't being ironic :). I'm sure I've seen similar schemes before that informed my "idea", though.
Which is why most right click menu options also can be found in another place. The right click menu is a shortcut much like hotkeys. Not essential, but convenient.
Yet oddly we appear to be going down a route where UI is hidden a lot:
a. long-press on a touch-screen device to select text, show a menu etc.
b. buttons with hieroglyphics to indicate what to do (worse than the old floppy disk for save) - eg. iOS' share button is a box with an arrow going into it (which is confusing to me as I do not want to put my concept into a box - I want to share it OUTSIDE my box of a device).
c. Sliding from sides of the screen to show notification areas, control panels (iOS), or "split screen" apps (Samsung Note), or charms (Windows).
d. Using different gestures to do things like take screenshots on Samsung note devices (swipe your entire hand across the screen)
e. Hiding UI elements until something is done, eg. scrollbars on OSX by default until you scroll (which you would need the scrollbar to actually do...)
They are all very simple once you know them but it must be very difficult as a first-time user, particularly if you are an older first-time user where your ability to absorb information like a sponge is diminished.
Every couple of years interaction is reinvented it seems! This differs from the decades of computer use where the only massive changes were scrollwheels on mice.
> 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.
You press Command+D, dauh. You know D for Bookmark :)
Part of the engagement reduction has to do with simple confusion on what the heck it is but I think even when it's well-understood it's clunky and distracts from better UX design.
I find myself attributing this to the constantly hammered home message from Apple and MS about how easy computer use is.
Therefore when something is "not easy" (aka, breaks with people's rote learning), people having trouble will not admit it. As it will in their mind be the equivalent of admitting they are stupid.
Last I checked bookmarking a page is just clicking the star button to the right of the search bar. Though maybe Firefox on Windows has a different UI nowadays. You could also (still, thankfully) just enable the menu bar in Firefox.
Funny thing, I am so used to Ctrl-D that I have never used the star button. Until now, I didn't even know what it was for. Different strokes different folks I guess.
Before the hamburger menu, people were complaining about the MS Office style ribbon. Design fads are an endless cycle of "ops, just froze my thumb!" -> "wait, I'll just put your hand on fire to solve that" -> "ops, my hand is on fire!" -> "wait let me freeze your arm", and so on.
Just like the ribbon, there are plenty of things wrong with the hamburger. One of them is that people can not even find it on a large screen. Both can be used well (look at AutoCad 2010 for a good example of ribbon; there are plenty of good examples of the hamburger on phone apps), and both are widely abused. But I'll just disagree that almost everything needs it. Almost nothing on a desktop of tablet needs it, it's a phone thing.
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.
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.
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.
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 network is probably a critical priority, and if you really want a user to do something, you give it a top-level navigation item.
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.
It's beyond me why they made the choice to move out Messages to a different app. Not only is it incredibly frustrating when I accidentally click the messages tab bar, and the entire FB app closes and another app opens, with no easy way to quickly go back (on iOS), but it also eliminated one of the very few reasons I ever needed to open FB app in the first place, to chat with people. Before, when I would open the FB app to chat with people, I would inevitably quickly look through the feed, and be exposed to one or two of their crappy ads. Now I can just open the FB Chat client and never bother with the main app. A win for me, perhaps. But a win for FB?
> 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.
It's not about balance, cluttering or abuses, it's all about engagement. Ultimately design decisions must be data-driven. If using other nav patterns you increase user engagement (and consequently revenue for the company) the hamburger should be replaced. So, A/B test it, and you will learn which is the correct choice: hamburger, tabs, segmented control, etc
It's a common pattern that is used everywhere. If we were to zero base think, then yeah, it's absolutely horrible. But since it is already established people look for it. Better to go with an established pattern than reinvent your own. That being said, the article advocates tab bars and I think that is fine if you have the screen real estate. Often times you don't though.
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.
Almost everything has or needs something like a hamburger menu somewhere. Can it be abused? Yes. Does that make it inherently bad? I don't think so.