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Comment by throwaway843 | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what's cognitively loading about three horizontal bars arranged in a square located in the corner of an app or website.

Screens, somewhat counterintuitively, used to be wider. Because they were not on handheld mobile devices. Then we had the menubar and nested dropdowns, suckerfish, etc. It was an exciting time to see a menu, you were never quite sure what you were going to get - I believe there are positives to learning curves for power users.

But I digress. 三 means 3 in Chinese. It doesn't take cognitive load. Why does a hamburger? I really am curious.

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I use to know a gamer who used a phone for something like a decade. He got stuck doing something and I had to point out the burger to him. The thing he was looking for was interestingly enough not there. Apparently all websites he used were perfectly usable without knowing the button exists.

In contrast, some people can't not-read something and it being a button is automatically parsed out. Symbols and icons have to be learned which is a more gradual process. The other day I didn't recognize the flower icon for settings.

> The other day I didn't recognize the flower icon for settings.

The what now? When did they stop using gears for settings?

This one looked much more like a flower with elongated elliptical teeth lacking space between them.

Pretty much this...

https://www.dreamstime.com/daisy-flower-outline-icon-white-f...

I'm still considering stealing the idea. If you put a daisy in the top corner others will get to experience the same.

Ah yes, this...

https://www.dreamstime.com/white-daisy-chamomile-smiling-fac...

I'm onto something here...

https://www.vecteezy.com/png/11017932-cute-burger-cartoon-il...

Well, to put it in perspective, consider these three words:

Menu Settings Notepad

If these are actionable buttons, the message is encoded and decoded by viewers.

Three bars means what, exactly? There’s the cognitive load.

> Three bars means what, exactly? There’s the cognitive load.

This was true early on when it was not a common convention, or only used in mobile apps. Now, it is nearly universal, though still not nearly standard enough in placement or presentation.

If we were to redo history, it would've been great to see an expanding menu closely positioned by a top-left logo. Sort of like a Windows Start Menu for each website.

I understand and agree to an extent with common use.

However, it stands that language is more specific and unambiguous—thus better suited to communicate an action.

There’s also the problem of the plethora of OTHER icons which use horizontal bars to cause even more cognitive load.

And then, there are many people who have not learned hamburger menu since childhood, and thus the burden is even greater!

Three bars means... the exact same thing the thousands and thousands of times it's been seen before.

People have no inate understanding of 'menu'. We don't even read short words like that letter by letter, it's read as a block and is far more complex than three bars.

I've seen too many variants of icons for "general" menu. Three bars, three dots, square, square in square, tall rectangle, gear, company logo and probably a few more.

And if we want to focus on just three bars let's not leave out the skeuomorphism trend where three bars meant the "grip" area, something to use to rearrange items or windows.

Well, actually the three bars are now two: the cool kids have replaced hamburger with a sausage roll.

See https://apple.com

For continuity, maybe we should call it the "hot dog" menu.

Three bars means... the exact same thing the thousands and thousands of times it's been seen before.

This is true. It means "exactly the same" where it was used millions of times before it landed on a computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bar

People spend years specifically learning how to read starting in early childhood. It's expected in the current era that people above a certain age are literate to at least some degree. People usually don't spend years specifically learning how to interpret icons except when they have to in an app or on a sign they run into.

"Menu" has a consistent meaning (a list of items to choose from) which most people can be assumed to know. Icons aren't as easily parsed and take more of a mental load to reason about them. Or just trial and error to figure them out.

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