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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
by 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.