The Hamburger menu era ended in 2014, when Apple literally trashed the concept during its annual WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, urging developers to use the Tab Bar in their projects. In May of that year, Tech Crunch published an article proposing to “Kill The Hamburger Button!“, calling the three-bar icon “the devil,” which lowers engagement and hides options from the user. In 2015, Google also started introducing “Bottom navigation”, an analogue of Apple’s Tab Bar, on its platforms.

Hamburger Menu: pros and cons

We’ve already written about this design element in the article “Hamburger Menu: to use it or not to use it?” Of course, this type of menu is a great way to save precious space on mobile screens, but it is also less intuitive for the user.

Figure 1: Credit Instagram @alexmuench via @UITrends

Here is a list of the main disadvantages:

• Icon isn’t clear ( some users still have trouble recognizing the icon with three bars);
• Less intuitive;
• Takes a lot of core functionality out of the user’s view;
• Less visible;
• Usability issues.

The Nielsen Norman Group published a study showing that the hidden navigation of the Hamburger menu is less noticeable than the visible or partially visible navigation of a website. This also leads to an increase in the time it takes a user to navigate and complete a task on the platform.

But now let’s look at some of the benefits:

• Allows you to simplify the UI;
• Provides a clearer layout of the interface;
• Creates more space on the screen;
• Makes for a simple and clean design.

Even though in 2021 many large companies removed the hamburger icon from their design and opted for a more intuitive solution like the Tab Bar, in some cases the three-bar icon is still the best solution for different designs. It’s perfect for Apps designed to solve basic tasks, like getting a taxi ride or ordering food, because it frees up space for other important layout elements.

Figure 2: Screenshot dell’app Uber, Ciao Spesa, it Taxi

Tab Bar: pros and cons

Unlike the Hamburger menu, the Tab Bar has many advantages that greatly improve the User Experience:

• there is no need to touch an icon to know where the user is in the app, it is always visible
• users see all top-level navigation options
• the Tab bar is “thumb-friendly” and easier to reach with one hand

The main disadvantage of this type of menu is the limited number of navigation options, since only three to seven icons can be placed in the bar to make sure they’re still visible to users.

Another disadvantage of this type of solution is that the bottom bar takes up part of the screen. In some cases this can become critical to the usability of the app.

This type of menu requires UX designers and app developers to be more selective about the choice of icons occupying the bottom bar. Available screen space of the mobile device is very limited and there is no way to hide the infinite menu with three bars as there is in the case of Hamburger.

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