menus Articles & Videos

  • Hamburger Menus and Hidden Navigation Hurt UX Metrics

    Discoverability is cut almost in half by hiding a website’s main navigation. Also, task time is longer and perceived task difficulty increases.

  • Expandable Menus: Pull-Down, Square, or Pie?

    Selecting an option inside a menu depends on how far away that option is from the menu icon. Drop-down menus, megamenus, pie or radial menus, and marking menus arrange items in different patterns to optimize the reach time.

  • List Thumbnails on Mobile: When to Use Them and Where to Place Them

    Decide whether and where to display thumbnails for list items based on the images’ importance relative to associated text, on whether images will be displayed for all list items, and on whether the small images are recognizably different from each other.

  • Top 3 IA Questions about Navigation Menus

    The number and order of navigation categories, and use of hover menus for touchscreens are frequently asked questions that arise when organizing information on a website or application.

  • Maximize the Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen

    On a large screen, hiding the chrome significantly affects discoverability and interaction cost, with virtually no improvement to the content-to-chrome ratio.

  • Bad Intranet Navigation Labels: 3 Workarounds

    Many intranets are saddled with poorly understood labels. If you can't change them, add context to make these labels more transparent to users.

  • Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid

    For desktop sites, demoting your main content categories into a drop-down menu makes it harder for users to discover your offerings.

  • Mega Menus Gone Wrong

    Big 2-D drop-downs can facilitate site navigation – if they're properly designed. Two examples illustrate some mega menu usability pitfalls.

  • Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability

    Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult.