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AMA: I'm Matias Duarte, a VP of Design at Google!

over 8 years ago from Matias Duarte, VP Design, Google

  • Mitch SaidMitch Said, over 8 years ago

    Hi Matias,

    The hamburger menu has gotten a bad UX rap of late - did Google Design have any concerns with it as a prominent MD pattern? (also just realized that you share initials with Material Design - coincidence?)

    5 points
    • Matias DuarteMatias Duarte, over 8 years ago

      Hell yeah. We agonized over it!

      It’s pretty clear that “hamburgers” can be overused. It’s just too easy for someone trying to “clean up” their app to shove all that stuff in the drawer where it gets lost - out of sight and out of mind. However there are a lot of secondary functions that are really nice to tuck out of the way, so we tried to include it as a possible pattern with strong guidance around when it’s appropriate to use. Maybe we didn’t do a good enough job on that, and that’s one of the things you can expect us to keep doing with the spec going forward: making it clearer and easier to use.

      14 points
      • Asher SimondsAsher Simonds, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

        On a related note, it'd be great to see more use case examples in the guidelines that don't use the navigation drawer pattern. As it stands, nearly every top-level render in the spec show it and it might (if subconsciously) steer people into thinking that's the only way to structure their app on Android.

        Food for thought.

        14 points