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Well, human beings have grown quite accustomed to using symbols to represent actions they need to take. In the United States, I remember learning about Mr. Yuck

by dpcan 5y ago

Well, human beings have grown quite accustomed to using symbols to represent actions they need to take. In the United States, I remember learning about Mr. Yuck stickers by the time I was 4, or the shape and color of a stop sign, green means go, walk and don’t walk figures, even an exit sign always looked the same even if I couldn’t read. The hamburger menu takes someone explaining it to you just one time to know what it is every time.

rmetzler 5y ago
Icons don’t work with on page search (e.g CTRL+F). And it’s hard to describe icons to someone else on the phone. I‘m not sure if Word is still the mess it used to be, but this kind of interface design can be really hard to understand and learn. Currently for me this is Blender. The software is complex, the interface mirrors this, but if you’re new to it, this is really hard to learn.
- kaba0 5y ago
  I guess after a point it is simply inherent complexity. Like, I can’t even imagine a GUI that would make someone seeing it for the first time know some semi-advanced feature in Word. First of all, the whole problem domain has to be taught/discovered. And sure, people often learn by trial-and-error and it makes sense to try to maximalize this sort of discoverability in all software, but I would say that it doesn’t scale. Even with the “better” labeled menus, gimp is not intuitive to say the least. So perhaps the (often annoying) teach you by showing is the better direction? My gripe with it is that it is often applied for trivial mobile apps for things like “search by using the search bar”.. but I think an all-menu/all-action text-based search functionality would be a must as well.
  - rmetzler 5y ago
    In MacOS you can search the menu of GUI apps. This helps discovery so much.
at_a_remove 5y ago
Mr. Yuck is green, Mr. Yuck is mean, Mr. Yuck also has the shape of a face absolutely filled with disgust at having put something terrible in his mouth. In short, Mr. Yuck communicates something purely by expression rather than association. The hamburger menu looks like decoration, or a portion of the I Ching. Nothing about three horizontal lines says "I contain options for navigation." Now, were six lines used, with every other line being indented, and then a \ or a / here and there, it would look like something folded up, and I would think, "Oh, unfold this thing." But three horizontal lines just ... no, I got nothin'.
- gowld 5y ago
  It's an iconic representation of a list or menu. You learn it once, and it works everywhere. And it fits on a small screen.
  - Angostura 5y ago
    'You learn it once' is doing quite a lot of work there. I tend to use a hamburger labeled with 'Menu'
  - josho 5y ago
    I encourage you to go watch a novice computer user. After seeing them struggle I suspect you'll change your mind. I personally view the hamburger menu similar to my junk drawer at home. It's where the designer stuffs crap that isn't very important. So, it's the last place I look for when I need to get something done in an app.
  - gbear605 5y ago
    Just this week I was on three different customer calls where I had to explain to a relatively technical user (they use our website on a daily basis for their job) what the hamburger menu in Chrome was. None of them understood that it was a thing that they could click on to get to other options. It's just not intuitive.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

by dpcan 5y ago

rmetzler 5y ago

Icons don’t work with on page search (e.g CTRL+F). And it’s hard to describe icons to someone else on the phone. I‘m not sure if Word is still the mess it used to be, but this kind of interface design can be really hard to understand and learn. Currently for me this is Blender. The software is complex, the interface mirrors this, but if you’re new to it, this is really hard to learn.

kaba0 5y ago
I guess after a point it is simply inherent complexity. Like, I can’t even imagine a GUI that would make someone seeing it for the first time know some semi-advanced feature in Word. First of all, the whole problem domain has to be taught/discovered. And sure, people often learn by trial-and-error and it makes sense to try to maximalize this sort of discoverability in all software, but I would say that it doesn’t scale. Even with the “better” labeled menus, gimp is not intuitive to say the least. So perhaps the (often annoying) teach you by showing is the better direction? My gripe with it is that it is often applied for trivial mobile apps for things like “search by using the search bar”.. but I think an all-menu/all-action text-based search functionality would be a must as well.
- rmetzler 5y ago
  In MacOS you can search the menu of GUI apps. This helps discovery so much.

at_a_remove 5y ago

Mr. Yuck is green, Mr. Yuck is mean, Mr. Yuck also has the shape of a face absolutely filled with disgust at having put something terrible in his mouth. In short, Mr. Yuck communicates something purely by expression rather than association. The hamburger menu looks like decoration, or a portion of the I Ching. Nothing about three horizontal lines says "I contain options for navigation." Now, were six lines used, with every other line being indented, and then a \ or a / here and there, it would look like something folded up, and I would think, "Oh, unfold this thing." But three horizontal lines just ... no, I got nothin'.

gowld 5y ago
It's an iconic representation of a list or menu. You learn it once, and it works everywhere. And it fits on a small screen.
- Angostura 5y ago
  'You learn it once' is doing quite a lot of work there. I tend to use a hamburger labeled with 'Menu'
- josho 5y ago
  I encourage you to go watch a novice computer user. After seeing them struggle I suspect you'll change your mind. I personally view the hamburger menu similar to my junk drawer at home. It's where the designer stuffs crap that isn't very important. So, it's the last place I look for when I need to get something done in an app.
- gbear605 5y ago
  Just this week I was on three different customer calls where I had to explain to a relatively technical user (they use our website on a daily basis for their job) what the hamburger menu in Chrome was. None of them understood that it was a thing that they could click on to get to other options. It's just not intuitive.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]