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The site I used for the testing was thispage.amsterdam which uses a hamburger menu. Very useful if you don’t want to annoy people on your mailing lists.įor the purposes of this post, I focused on 2 types of test Navigation Tests and Preferences Tests. Their user pool also provide very detailed feedback on the tasks they’re set. They provide a suite of usability tests that you can use to test pretty much any element of web design. To conduct this research I decided to use some of UsabilityHub’s services. So I felt it necessary to gather some data from user testing to back up any points I make. And this is for mobile! Hypotheses & Test DesignĪ lot of the articles and blog posts I read when researching the topic had strong opinions both for and against hamburger menus but very few had evidence to back up their claims. Source.Īnother point to consider, particularly if your website audience is predominately over 45, is that only 52% actually understand what a mobile hamburger menu is according the Catalyst Group. On a large screen, hiding the chrome significantly affects discoverability and interaction cost, with virtually no improvement to the content-to-chrome ratio. Also, task time is longer and perceived task difficulty increases. Source.ĭiscoverability is cut almost in half by hiding a website’s main navigation. Some of their findings include:įor desktop sites, demoting your main content categories into a drop-down menu makes it harder for users to discover your offerings. The Nielsen Norman Group, widely respected as leading industry experts on UX & usability have done extensive research on navigation trends.

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Any UX professional will tell you that adding unnecessary steps to a user journey is a huge no no. The hamburger menu inherently adds an extra step for for a user to navigate to a given page. The majority of research and commentary against hamburger menus focuses on user experience. Using a hamburger menu allows you to utilise the principles more effectively. I wrote a previous article on designing for conversions where I mention some key design principles such as direction and whitespace that when used effectively can increase conversions. When paired with strong visual elements and a clear call to action it can help users perform desired actions.Īlso, by having the main navigation hidden behind a hamburger menu it allows designers to be more creative with white space, large images and direction. Hamburger menus also fit in well with clean, minimalist design. Thus by having a strong CTA within the hamburger menu it helps to point users down the conversion path:īy keeping the navigation simple, eliminating extraneous options and providing a clear objective, you are pointing your users in the right direction toward making a conversion.

UsabilityGeek cite one study’s findings that when users are given too many options, they are 10 times less likely to act. Most of the arguments come down to clean, minimalist design vs usability. Previous Research & CommentaryĪdmittedly, the topic of using hamburger menus on desktop has been widely debated among designers and UX experts. I will explore the arguments for and against using hamburger menus on a desktop website and more importantly perform my own research through user testing using UsabilityHub. What’s intriguing is its evolution from a mobile usability best practice to a common form of desktop navigation.

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The benefits of a hamburger menu are obvious in a mobile environment where having a full navigation menu is simply unpractical. Now as I’m sure you are aware, it appears in pretty much every responsive website (mobile) and a significant proportion of mobile apps. The 3 lined menu or as its more commonly known the hamburger menu.

The idea is to look at some common web design trends and identify whether they have a negative or positive impact on usability and by extension user experience.įirst up is a navigation design trend that first appeared about five years ago and was popularised by Facebook’s mobile app.

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Welcome to the first in a series of posts in a showdown of design trends vs usability. #hamitems a:hover in simple English – Show the menu items when the hidden checkbox is checked.Should you use a hamburger menu on desktop screens? Is it clean design or bad UX? Let’s find out.

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