5 Important Reasons Why You Should Avoid Using the Hamburger Menu
And what to do instead.
There’s no denying that hamburger menu has made it’s way into the mainstream of mobile UX. Whether you use Android, iOS or Windows 10 the application drawer is there to navigate you through countless mobile apps. Heck, it even has become one of the main foundations of the Material UI straight from Google.
However, the overwhelming popularity of this solution doesn’t mean it is the best one. On the contrary, it might be just the easiest and thus flawed. Let me share with you the most important 5 reasons why it’s a bad solution from the user experience perspective:
1. Hidden content
When you look at all those apps which use the navigation drawer one of the first things you notice is that until you actually make an action and tap the menu icon there’s no way to see what are the app’s contents. In other words, it requires the user to take an action to see other available actions. And if he doesn’t do so you just loose this user’s further engagement. Doesn’t sound pretty good, does it?
The app’s navigation is the app’s functionality. It should be prominent and easily accessible, not shoved into a drawer.
2. Too many taps
Even with most elegant and deliberate execution, the side menu requires at least two different taps to navigate. One for opening the navigation drawer and the second for selecting the main destination. Is that too much? Maybe. Can it be less? That’s for sure. And when it comes to mobile navigation, the speed and convenience are among the main factors of user’s satisfaction and eventually, the app’s success.
3. Hard to reach
Half of the UX debates are about the arrangement of interface elements. Though opinions on many topics may vary, it’s undeniable that the top left and right corners of the device’s screen are hard to reach by using a thumb. Sure, many people use their mobiles with two hands, but that’s not a reason to make the usage more difficult for the latter.
4. Doesn’t make sense (for some)
It’s 2015 and you might be surprised how many users are still not familiar with the three-lined icon. According to the research conducted by exis web the ‘menu’ titled button had 20% more clicks than hamburger icon. Saying that, making your users confused isn’t the best way to engage them.
5. Makes you lazy
This may sound weird, but that’s true. When dealing with an app drawer you have almost unrestricted space when it comes to content arrangement and its number. And that’s not a good thing. Having such freedom may cloud your judgement and make you deliver a non-optimised product with many pointless features and lacking the critical ones. It doesn’t matter if you’re a product owner, UI designer, UX researcher or a programmer — thinking of efficient app navigation should always be your priority.
Having too much freedom might make you lazy and just throw all the links in the side menu without even thinking about navigation’s architecture.
The solution
So, what to do instead? I suggest taking a look at some of the apps you use the most. Let’s take Facebook, Instagram and Tinder as our examples.
Note: Apps made by Google usually come with the app drawer as it’s one of google’s main UI principles as mentioned in the post’s introduction.
As you can see those apps make neat the use of a tabbed menu, which shows all of the navigational options right from the bat.
What’s interesting, Facebook and Tinder make use of the ‘app’ drawer in their own way. Facebook uses a modified hamburger icon to show you all your contacts while Instagram displays the app options in the side menu. Keep in mind, they both have their core functionality in the most accessible areas though.
Of course, there may be situations where using the navigation drawer is unavoidable. Let’s say, an app with tons of different options and screens might be the right place for the hamburger. Also, all the additional contents like the Facebook’s friend list or Tinder’s settings seem like a good subjects for side navigation.
Eventually, the most important thing is to think of the applications’ architecture and it’s impact on convenient navigation.
Hope you enjoyed this article. Feel free to share your thoughts with us!
