It's worth listening to what Luke Wroblewski (the designer who coined the term "mobile first") has to say about hamburger menus... http://uxim15.uie.com/videos/luke-wroblewski (Jump to 26mins although the whole talk is excellent)
- First he makes the point that mobile has taken over desktop very fast.
- Then he explains we are not as experienced in mobile (here for 6 years) than in desktop as we know it (here for 29 years). Worst, the tool we still use mostly is the desktop (as developers/designers/...)
- So we have to learn this "new" mobile thing und UNLEARN what we know about desktop. That's his main point
- Then he explains the different attempts to fit a desktop website inside mobile
* The "Big List" that you need to scroll endlessly to navigate
* The "Hamburger" menu that people don't understand (A/B testing showed huge drops in usage with them)
> Tabs are still better and understandable (facebook came back to it)
> Don't hide important information and/or actions => you have to understand what's important for your users
> best pattern: contextual important information for each activity of your app, the rest is hidden behind a menu button emphasized as a button
- After that he gives examples:
* Reduce the amount of input in forms
* HotelTonight (just 5 hotels nearby w/ good price) vs Hotels.com (awful search, stars rating ...)
* Yelp's mobile app that don't support writing reviews vs. HotelTonight that can easily be added by just taking pictures
- Then, he explains how he works better in the startup culture
* It's not about moving fast, it's about learning fast
* Don't release and walk away (feedback loop: release, refine, get feedback)
* Work with APIs and get your logic inside it
Oh wow, moral of the story is that hamburger menus, like every other design decision, requires careful consideration, and has its place in modern app design.
Who knew.
Not using hamburger menus doesn't magically make your app better. You need alternatives. Would I suggest a hamburger menu for a menu with 3 items? No of course not. But if you have an app with 10 core menu items, there's not many alternatives. You could try to force and cram that into a navigation bar with 3 item-categories, which open pages with deeper navigation trees, and that'd tick all the 'why-not' boxes of the menubar the article mentions (like unnecessary clicking, users that can't find their information, don't know where they can go or where they are on the page etc etc).
Fact is that a lot of users are indeed familiar with hamburger menus these days and they're becoming a type of standard just like a back arrow is universally understood, and find their way outside of apps, too. (like the Chrome browser which I'm typing this on right now.)
Combine that with the fact the top navigation bar's title telling you where you are, and a non-crammed side menu showing you exactly where you can go, it's certainly a decent solution for many apps.
Is there a solution for when you have anything more than 5 primary sections in your app? The Apple suggestion would probably be to reconsider the scope of your app, but what if that's just simply not coincident with your goals? Shit out of luck?
Actually, the UITabBarController supports more than 5 items perfectly well. It automatically adds a "More" button if you add more than 5 items. There you can cram everything in that you would otherwise have put in your hamburger-menu.
Also, if you enable it, it automatically allows users to choose which tabs that goes where, just like in the music app :)
Well, all my companies apps from now on will have the drawer menu. First, users are familiar with them at this point. Second, the drawer looks a lot nicer than the UITabBar as suggested below.
I haven't heard the the term "hamburger menu" until now. That's a pretty condescending term for a UI widget that looks visually pleasing (to many people).
Apple are just pissed they didn't think of the hamburger menu first. This is terrible advice, the are understood by all and the few people that don't know where this mysterious control will take them can just click it and see. It's not like it's the rm -rf button.
Apple doesn't usualky care if someone else did something first though. If they decided the Hamburger Menu works well in particular use cases, and want to use it in an app of theirs at some point in the future, they'll just drop it into a new iOS SDK and hope everyone forgets about this advise.
Hi Aaron, I hadn't seen that library (RESideMenu) before. I'm excited to see how they went about implementing this. I'm sure you'd still agree this floating style isn't nearly as popular as the vast majority of sliding drawers - that is why I called it unique.
