The little three-line "hamburger" icon that opens the menu on nearly every mobile site isn't new. Designer Norm Cox drew it in 1981 for the Xerox Star, one of the first computers with a graphical interface. It sat mostly unused for thirty years, until smartphones arrived and designers needed a way to tuck a full menu into a tiny screen.
A good idea can wait decades for its moment, then feel obvious overnight.
Design is full of these small, hard-won conventions, and using them well is what makes a site feel effortless. We lean on patterns people already understand instead of reinventing them, so visitors never have to stop and figure out how your site works. Familiar, done right, beats clever every time.
Further reading: original source ↗
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