
Hamburger icon: How these three lines mystify most people - opium_tea
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31602745
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currywurst
It would really be great if people stop calling it the "Hamburger" icon, and
just dub it as the "Menu" icon.

When I ask someone (who is not clued into UX discussions, e.g. my parents) to
look for the "Hamburger" icon, they expect to find a literal hamburger shape.
Ask them to look for "three or four parallel lines", and they find it faster.
I've then asked them to learn is as the "Menu" button, and that seems to
stick. Otherwise, it is GOTO START ;) !

So designers everywhere, please change this horrible name and use a more easy
to grok name.

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logicallee
oh. I though it meant "settings" and every time I see both the hamburger icon
(that we're discussing) and the gears icon (a common icon for settings,
preferences, configuration) I get confused as to how I'm supposed to guess
where you've put what I want.

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psykovsky
Just click around until you find what you need. You even get to know the
entire app if you do that. You're not going to blast a nuke or kill someone by
clicking, after all.

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DanBC
There's often no, or poorly implemented, undo on mobile so you risk data loss
or mass-communicating something wanted to keep private or screwing up some
setting and no way to retrieve it.

And it's not just "click the visible elements until you achieve the disired
result", it's touch visible and invisible elements, combined with all the
differen touch-gestures you know, in the hope that you'll get what you want,
but possibly not.

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logicallee
This is actually how I always pictured the technology of the future. (Same as
when I think about the interface from Minority Report - i.e. Tom Cruise is
just gesturing around aimlessly, not able to actually do what he's trying to.)

Who would have thought that when it came to mobile tech, we actually WOULDN'T
have figured it out! Just click around and hope you don't destroy anything. It
actually _is_ just like it looks in scifi films :)

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DanBC
Someone needs to redub that Minority Report scene with error messages and
frustrated tom cruise unable to achieve anything.

Or the star trek computer mis-hearing what everyone says.

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DanBC
> Putting the hamburger inside a box, so it looks like a button, increases use
> by 22.4%.

I'm glad to see evidence that shows the extremes of flat designs has stupid
ideas.

~~~
Nemcue
B-b-but skeumorphism sucks, right guys?..

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Quppa
Sadly Microsoft is in a rush to embrace the 'hamburger menu' in Windows 10
(mobile and otherwise), basically because it's common on the dominant mobile
platforms: [http://www.windowscentral.com/why-microsoft-hamburger-
menus-...](http://www.windowscentral.com/why-microsoft-hamburger-menus-
windows-10-phone)

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pan69
Doesn't it represent a "list"? As in a menu, a list of things..

~~~
digi_owl
I Think people would pick up on that more if it had more but thinner lines. Or
maybe broke up the lines into something that looked like text.

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wodenokoto
It's funny to read how differently this icon is interpreted. I always saw it
as a menu and could for the longest time not figure out what this hamburger
was.

I really like the "equal sign gone wrong"

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Randgalt
TIL - people call the menu icon the "hamburger icon". Am I the only one who's
never heard of the "hamburger icon"?

