Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016 should go meatless

By Steve Endow

Roving Dynamics GP reporter Tim Wappat travelled to London today to get a sneak peek at a very early version of Dynamics GP 2016.  He posted an article on his blog:

http://www.timwappat.info/post/2015/09/15/GP2016-looking-sweet-in-HTML5

One of the interesting side notes that he mentions is that the "hamburger icon", or "hamburger menu" was being used, for the time being, in the pre-release GP 2016 web client.


The demo that Tim saw was obviously pre-pre-pre-Release, and everything is subject to change, but if Microsoft is even considering using the hamburger menu, I beseech them to reconsider.

I admit that I didn't know the name of that three-bar icon until a few weeks ago--which is when I read this very convincing article on why the hamburger menu is a horrible UI element.

http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/    (link dead as of July 2017)

The article is very convincing in its explanation of why the hamburger menu is detrimental to application navigation, and then it goes on to cite numerous examples and statistics to support its assertion.

Here is another article with the same conclusion and more stats:

https://redbooth.com/blog/hamburger-menu-iphone-app


Update: 

Another article:

https://speckyboy.com/analyzing-effectiveness-hamburger-menus-web-design/

And another:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hamburger-menus/

And another:

http://jamesarcher.me/hamburger-menu

And yet another:

https://lmjabreu.com/post/why-and-how-to-avoid-hamburger-menus/


Are you seeing a trend here?



After reading about the design deficiencies, I now notice how annoying the hamburger menu is on my iPhone apps--I am looking for settings and options and features, but can't find them--until I realize there is an innocuous little three line icon in the corner that I have to click to expand a menu.  It's a great way to hide features so that your users never use them.

While there may be some situations where limited use of the hamburger menu may make sense--rarely used settings or infrequently used windows, it definitely should be used very sparingly.  But based on the articles above, it should be replaced with some other menu design.

Save the cows.  Get rid of the hamburger.


Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP for Dynamics GP and a Dynamics GP Certified IT Professional in Los Angeles.  He is the owner of Precipio Services, which provides Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.

You can also find him on Google+ and Twitter



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