Because the overwhelming observed pattern for users is that they want something, and they will tap on the thing on the screen that appears most likely to lead t

Because the overwhelming observed pattern for users is that they want something, and they will tap on the thing on the screen that appears most likely to lead towards the goal. Roughly speaking, users will look at all possible touches on the screen and score them based on relevance, and tap the highest scoring element. The typical use of a mobile app is effective a pathfinding problem. The problem is that because of the inherent meaninglessness of the hamburger button, the hamburger button always scores near zero. Which also means that users will actually tap on things that lead them away from what they want before they touch the hamburger button. A common pattern you will see when a user is looking for a less-used function of the app is that they will make several mis-touches first, tapping on things that do not lead to their goal, before backing up and trying the hamburger button. Effectively hamburger buttons will send your users on wild goose chases through your app because it is a UI of last resort. Even when users are looking for obscure/miscellaneous functions of your software, they will look practically everywhere else first before looking under the hamburger button. There are better ways to point users towards less-used functions of the app that