Chapter #23. Don't Hide Items Away in a "Hamburger" Menu
Few UI patterns can be as controversial as the hamburger menu. Over the past five years it's become the de facto way of offering a menu on small displays, typically as a website scales into mobile or tablet width using responsive design:
Research shows ("Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics" NNG, (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hamburger-menus/) 2016) that hamburger menus:
Slow down discovery time for users
Increase perceived task difficulty
Slow down time to complete a task
Simply put, the hamburger menu hides items away from users and makes them less discoverable. Additionally, because the menu is hidden, users can't gain a sense of "where they are" in the product.
Some alternative design patterns to the hamburger menu:
Navigation on the bottom of the view:Made popular by iOS apps, you can get four or five key features into an ever-present bottom menu and maybe make the fifth item "fly out" with...