Mobile Application Developer Interview Question:

Please explain when do you choose a hamburger menu and how this is this pattern interpreted by the user?

Submitted by: Muhammad

Due to the fact that mobile design is constrained by the small size of mobile devices and their displays, it's of vital importance that we present the information properly, and adequately prioritize content. It is very important to make sure this is done at this stage, before we proceed to mockup design, because that's a matter of UX rather than UI design.

It's also important to decide which information we provide first and which one will remain hidden. In order avoid hiding content, we can use different patterns like tabs, filters, and so on, while still providing the user with the most important information at the time. It's a bad practice to use hamburger menu even though sometimes we are forced to use it due to the massive amount of data that needs to be displayed. Based on research, we can conclude that the hamburger icon easily gets “lost” in the design, because many users tend to start scrolling immediately. It's in our nature to scroll and that why it's important to make sure everything important is presented to the user at a glance.

According to a study by Nielsen/Norman Group, a global leader in user experience research, training, and consulting, hidden navigation patterns (like hamburger menus) decrease content discoverability by 21% and increase the amount of time it takes to actually use navigation by 2 seconds on average.
Submitted by: Muhammad