The Hamburger Problem

Websites, web apps and native apps—they all have the same in common—they often use icons instead of written text to display links. The reason for that is to save space. Whether it’s the person’s silhouette icon to display the user’s profile link or the three lines list icon (the hamburger) to display the menu link—those icons should be well-known to web app and native app users. The same technique is used to save space on responsive websites that trigger smaller devices and mobile websites.

However I recently noticed this technique is also used to display links on (responsive) desktop websites—especially the hamburger icon. Of course, web app and native app users will immediately recognize those icons. But what about all the users that browse the internet with their desktop computers like my 89-year-old grandfather? He doesn’t own a smartphone and surfs on the internet about 30 minutes per day. He doesn’t know all those icons, especially not the hamburger icon and that it’s the symbol for a menu. The only thing he can do is to play the guessing game and use the trial-and-error method. Having screen resolutions up to 2560x1440 pixels and more it doesn’t make much sense to display a few menu links as the hamburger icon on a flexible full-width website.

Although it may look cool to display the menu links of a website as the hamburger icon it will probably confuse older people and non-digital natives. So think twice about how you want to display your menu links on your website for desktop users keeping your targeted audience in mind.