3 ms·

Not quite, the usage of lines are still conveying something, it's similar to pause, play, stop on media players, it's similar to back, forward and refresh icons

Not quite, the usage of lines are still conveying something, it's similar to pause, play, stop on media players, it's similar to back, forward and refresh icons on the browser. Line based symbols are easy to pick up and have been picked up by users from our testing, I'm really not sure what studies you're referring to (?) For an actual shitty example, look at Macos window button controls. Red yellow and green circles, they convey absolutely nothing, you're expected to learn them. Instead of slating this shitty design, everyone just rolls over and learns them.

dkonofalski 5y ago
I think you're either unaware or ignoring that, in both of those cases, there was precedent that people were already familiar with when those icons came out. Pause, play, and stop, for example, were found on nearly any media/cassette/tape player and served as simple indicators of the direction the tape/spool was going. The arrow to left meant the reel was spinning backwards because the tape moved to the left, the square meant stop because the reel didn't move at all, and the play icon meant that the reel was moving to the right. Add in double arrows to denote speed. Add a line at the far left/far right to indicate beginning/end. The hamburger has no such lineage. It started as a menu icon and changed slightly but no one had any idea what even the initial icon meant without an explanation that it's a list.
- underwater 5y ago
  The hamburger menu represents a list of items. It's symbolic, but at least a direct representation of the outcome the user wants. The play and stop icons were icons that describe an operation of a machine that will then indirectly produce the outcome the user wants. They require the user to know how the machine functions. No one thinks "I would like the tape to move to the right" or "I would like the music to stop, which means the tape needs to stop moving, which means stopping the spools, which means selecting the least circular shape".
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    >They require the user to know how the machine functions. No, they don't. That's why they worked so well and was my entire point. All people needed to know was that they wanted to go forward, backward, or stop movement in whatever music or video was playing and that's a clear metaphorical and symbolical link. Someone with no knowledge of the function could walk up to a tape recorder and infer what the symbols meant in relation to what was happening. The hamburger menu is not even intuitively a list and there's no connection that a user presented with it would recognize it as a call for a menu/list. There are plenty of user studies that confirm this.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> I'm really not sure what studies you're referring to (?) We did multiple usability studies over years for a company I worked at that built a very popular mobile app. The tests were standard usability test format, where we'd ask a user to complete a task and then just say "go" and figure it out. Times where the user had to find something in the hamburger menu, when we replaced the 3 lines with words like "MENU" or "MORE" always tested better. Designers pretty much universally hated the text version, and I do appreciate the localization challenges, but the results weren't ambiguous.

dkonofalski 5y ago

I think you're either unaware or ignoring that, in both of those cases, there was precedent that people were already familiar with when those icons came out. Pause, play, and stop, for example, were found on nearly any media/cassette/tape player and served as simple indicators of the direction the tape/spool was going. The arrow to left meant the reel was spinning backwards because the tape moved to the left, the square meant stop because the reel didn't move at all, and the play icon meant that the reel was moving to the right. Add in double arrows to denote speed. Add a line at the far left/far right to indicate beginning/end. The hamburger has no such lineage. It started as a menu icon and changed slightly but no one had any idea what even the initial icon meant without an explanation that it's a list.

underwater 5y ago
The hamburger menu represents a list of items. It's symbolic, but at least a direct representation of the outcome the user wants. The play and stop icons were icons that describe an operation of a machine that will then indirectly produce the outcome the user wants. They require the user to know how the machine functions. No one thinks "I would like the tape to move to the right" or "I would like the music to stop, which means the tape needs to stop moving, which means stopping the spools, which means selecting the least circular shape".
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  >They require the user to know how the machine functions. No, they don't. That's why they worked so well and was my entire point. All people needed to know was that they wanted to go forward, backward, or stop movement in whatever music or video was playing and that's a clear metaphorical and symbolical link. Someone with no knowledge of the function could walk up to a tape recorder and infer what the symbols meant in relation to what was happening. The hamburger menu is not even intuitively a list and there's no connection that a user presented with it would recognize it as a call for a menu/list. There are plenty of user studies that confirm this.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

> I'm really not sure what studies you're referring to (?) We did multiple usability studies over years for a company I worked at that built a very popular mobile app. The tests were standard usability test format, where we'd ask a user to complete a task and then just say "go" and figure it out. Times where the user had to find something in the hamburger menu, when we replaced the 3 lines with words like "MENU" or "MORE" always tested better. Designers pretty much universally hated the text version, and I do appreciate the localization challenges, but the results weren't ambiguous.