Hamburger minimalism
One of the most enduring design trends of the last few years has been minimalism due to its focus on clean, simple and easy-to-navigate aesthetics. It comes as no surprise, then, that hamburger menus are popular because they promote minimalism on any site, both in terms of design and function.
Hamburger focus
Web design is all about laying out elements and stressing some over others in an attempt to prioritize how site visitors absorb information. It’s part of how information architecture works: if you want visitors to understand what your site’s all about from the moment they lay eyes on it, then you’ll design to draw attention to the site’s tagline or value proposition while scaling down the importance of other elements.
Creative problem solving
Every site that’s built faces a big problem right off the bat: how does a designer plan things so that the site is both functional and still aesthetically attractive? Getting the navigation right from the get go—both in terms of the user experience and usability—is key. The hamburger menu allows creative and practical designers to come up with navigation solutions that serve both function and beauty. Sometimes, the solution isn’t what you’d ever really expect, and visitors tend to be blown away by a navigation layout that delights them with something they’ve rarely or never seen before.
Straightforward communication
The goal of any website is to have visitors use the site with ease and efficiency from the moment they begin browsing it. One of the most powerful ways of enabling this is through affordances, which communicate to visitors what various elements of a site mean and how they can be used. Pattern affordance uses familiarity to tell visitors immediately what an icon, for instance, can be used for. Ergo, pattern affordance quickly tells a visitor how they can interact with an icon to get a desired result. The hamburger menu has become nearly ubiquitous on mobile in recent years. Therefore, it’s a safe bet that a large number of users are familiar with it: how it looks, how they can use it (by tapping it to open a menu), and even where on the screen it’s usually to be found. Its presence on any website affords instant communication on how to navigate said site.
Not just a fad
Even now, in spite of the hamburger menu’s ubiquity, it still attracts criticism from some circles. Its wide adoption on many sites both mobile and desktop indicates that there’s a demand for it, yet doubts persist. By this point, it’s more than obvious that the hamburger menu is a permanent fixture on many homepages, both small and large. It’s more than a passing fad because designers understand that it solves navigational problems efficiently, smartly and easily. And that’s exactly why this approach to the navigational menu is now firmly rooted in our web-browsing habits.Marc Schenker
Marc’s a copywriter who covers design news for Web Designer Depot. Find out more about him at thegloriouscompanyltd.com.
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