<story><title>Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)</title><url>https://tdarb.org/blog/hamburger-menu-alternative.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ilamont</author><text>&lt;i&gt;When designing medium to large sized menu navigations on the mobile web the default go-to, for some time now, has been hamburger menus. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell it to the many people who have no idea what it means on a mobile device, or increasingly on desktop websites. I&amp;#x27;ve said it many times before, but it&amp;#x27;s worth repeating: Most people are frustrated by modern information tools. According to a 2015 OECD computer skills study, &amp;lt;6% of Americans are level 3 (highest) while half have only basic skills and 20% can&amp;#x27;t use computers. (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecd-ilibrary.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;skills-matter_9789264258051-en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecd-ilibrary.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;skills-matter_978926...&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;I like the sausage link concept &lt;i&gt;because it clearly labels options with text&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>&amp;gt; I like the sausage link concept because it clearly labels options with text.&lt;p&gt;100%. I&amp;#x27;m kinda surprised how the 3 lines hamburger menu got so prevalent in the first place, because it &lt;i&gt;always&lt;/i&gt; user tests poorly. My guess is that when flat minimalism (my favorite shitty example of this is when Android expected everyone to know what a flat square, circle and triangle are supposed to mean) was the rage, even though user testing always showed a ton of people didn&amp;#x27;t know what the three lines meant, that designers felt it would eventually become &amp;quot;the standard&amp;quot; and people would know.&lt;p&gt;Problem is, years later, tons of people &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; don&amp;#x27;t know what it means - every time we do user testing, words do better. I think these days design fads change so frequently that there really isn&amp;#x27;t enough time for any design to be that &amp;quot;standard&amp;quot; long enough for everyone to really grasp it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)</title><url>https://tdarb.org/blog/hamburger-menu-alternative.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ilamont</author><text>&lt;i&gt;When designing medium to large sized menu navigations on the mobile web the default go-to, for some time now, has been hamburger menus. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tell it to the many people who have no idea what it means on a mobile device, or increasingly on desktop websites. I&amp;#x27;ve said it many times before, but it&amp;#x27;s worth repeating: Most people are frustrated by modern information tools. According to a 2015 OECD computer skills study, &amp;lt;6% of Americans are level 3 (highest) while half have only basic skills and 20% can&amp;#x27;t use computers. (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecd-ilibrary.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;skills-matter_9789264258051-en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecd-ilibrary.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;skills-matter_978926...&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;I like the sausage link concept &lt;i&gt;because it clearly labels options with text&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reaperducer</author><text>The problem isn&amp;#x27;t the mechanics of the hamburger menu, it&amp;#x27;s that we use an icon to represent it.   I&amp;#x27;ve never seen a case where space was so scarce that the icon couldn&amp;#x27;t be replaced by the word &amp;quot;Menu.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there is some issue with internationalization, but I&amp;#x27;ve been to restaurants in 30+ countries, and &amp;quot;Menu&amp;quot; seems to be pretty universally-used word.</text></comment>