That's the problem with these animations: none of them have anything to do with movement in the real world, or even any connection to the meaning of the hamburg

That's the problem with these animations: none of them have anything to do with movement in the real world, or even any connection to the meaning of the hamburger icon itself. When you click the icon, you aren't thinking "I want to turn the icon into a big X." Instead, you're thinking "I want to see the menu." An animation that turns the hamburger into a big X in a flashy way has nothing to do with the goal you had in mind when clicking it. It's just a distraction. Unfortunately, many designers are drawn toward flashy, distracting, irrelevant animations like this. A good example is Office 2016 for OSX. It has a bunch of new animations, including two that are especially bad: 1) When you click a cell, it doesn't just highlight the cell like any other spreadsheet. It animates the outline cursor from the previously selected cell to the new one. But when you click on a cell, that very cell you're clicking on is where your attention is focused. You're done with the previously selected cell and no longer thinking about it. The animation from the old cell forcibly draws your attention back to the old cell, the one you're no longer interested in. 2) When you click one of the Ribbon headings, the entire new ribbon does a little sideways animation before settling into place. The animation goes either to the left or right, depending on the relative positions of the previously selected ribbon heading and the new one. It's as if they were trying to give the appearance that the ribbon is one big long continuous strip and the animation shows the correct part of the strip sliding into place - but they only show the very last part of that movement. This animation has nothing to do with what you wanted to do when you clicked the ribbon heading. It's very distracting and disorienting. There is a bit of good news for Excel users. Microsoft is going to provide an option to turn off these animations, after a request to remove them attracted over 2000 votes: https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304933-excel-for-mac/suggestions/9099424-allow-users-to-turn-off-cursor-glide-animation https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304933-excel-for-mac/sugg... Of course, making it an option means that most Excel users will never find that option and will just live with the distracting animations.