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Hamburger menu UX: too ubiquitous to fail?
Everyone has a chair in their house where they just throw random things. Coats, bags, sunglasses, books – you name it, it’s on the chair.
In the digital world, the hamburger menu is that chair. Don’t know where to put a link to the login page of your website? Hamburger menu. Want to allow people to contact support quickly? Hamburger menu. Where shall we put account settings? Hamburger menu.
The hamburger menu is where random sections of the site go to live, much like your random socks ending up on the chair.
And users aren’t phased by it.
Where did the hamburger menu come from?
Hell.
I’m joking. I think. I don’t like the hamburger menu much.
Its origin goes back to Norm Cox, who designed the icon for the Xerox Star (the world’s first digital GUI). It was – in his words – “meant to be very ‘road sign’ simple, functionally memorable, and mimic the look of the resulting displayed menu list.” And for that purpose it did very well and makes sense.
