Potentially unroll the hamburger menu

[jeffbaumes]

It would involve less clicks and be more discoverable to have Help, Settings, About, and Log Out as menubar items instead of putting them in a dropdown menu. I'm not sure when Close Project would be needed.

[alex-r-bigelow]

I would argue the other way around—I've been thinking about rolling up the series of icons at the top of each widget into a menu. Menus are usually better than toolbars because:

• They give you a non-ugly way to add text like "switch visualization" next to each icon, instead of just leaving users to guess at its functionality
• Without a menu, adding text next to icons really clutters things up, and creates space issues if you're going for a responsive design

As a side note, I use Close Project all the time, but then again I'm usually doing that when I want to debug the state of the app when no project is loaded—as we've merged the about and intro screens, About and Close Project essentially do the same thing (even though the former leaves the current project open).

[waxlamp]

If we unroll the hamburger menu, we'd use tooltips to show the user what action each corresponds to on rollover.

I also often use Close Project (for similar reasons as you, Alex) but there is also another important use case for it - to let a user feel like their workstation is "secure and safe" from prying eyes. More generally stated, Close Project is a way to get back to the fresh clean starting point, which is a navigational aid that may make someone feel safe and oriented while they use the app. The alternative is to delete everything after the root in the URL and hit enter, but I think the app ought to provide this use case natively if it exists as a use case at all.

There is a ton of discussion out there about whether to ditch or use hamburger menus. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other but I'll mention that I don't mind using menus if they are unobtrusive, pleasant to look at, and easy to use. Amazon.com, for instance, does a very nice job with menus, including some serious thought into how mouse motion interacts with the menus.

[waxlamp]

Here's a short article about Amazon's menus: http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown

The thing about detecting the mouse cursor path direction is a small stroke of UX genius.

[waxlamp]

And here's a pretty good article specifically about the hamburger menu, why people say they hate it, and how you can have one that isn't too terrible: http://usabilitygeek.com/making-case-for-desktop-hamburger-menu/

The bit about "decision fatigue" is interesting. We'd be skirting that by unrolling the menu. Their final takeaway seems to be to also include common nav options "out in the open" even if you have a menu with all possibilities inside it. Not sure if that is the way we should go or not.

[jeffbaumes]

Wish there was a single optimizing factor. Welcome to UX design I guess. It's those pesky users with their individuality and nonlinear thinking that keep messing things up. 😄

This is definitely one for the backlog.

[alex-r-bigelow]

I kind of like the idea of having both the menu and the toolbar (in both places). But I agree that this should be on the backlog.