Problem Statement

The pain point is that when opening the hamburger menu, it is unclear what view I am currently on. Re-selecting the same view that I'm already on (e.g. Currency) does nothing. but the menu item registers a click animation. Clicking out of the hamburger menu reveals that I'm already on that view.

Evidence or User Insights

When selecting a menu item that has already been selected (e.g. US Dollars) the menu item closes, even though it has already been selected as a conversion currency. This behavior should be more universal within the app.

Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and Github desktop allow re-selecting an item from the hamburger menu that is already open and it will return you to the same view while closing the menu. I did some very primitive research and found a paper which concluded that clicking on something should make progress towards an existing goal according to (Wang 2008, 409) and other criteria such as discover-ability. However, the size of the study was very small (n=5) so the results may not be statistically significant.

Additionally, if the menu item does close when it is clicked and is in the same view, this might not cause the user to perform a needed context switch when they switch to a different view if the view does not change but the menu item closes.

Wang X. (2008) Design and Evaluation of Intelligent Menu Interface through Cognitive Walkthrough Procedure and Automated Logging for Management Information System. In: Shen W., Yong J., Yang Y., Barthès JP.A., Luo J. (eds) Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design IV. CSCWD 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5236. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

Proposal

This will make the menu items more universal, as they would behave more similar. If someone is converting multiple values with different units, they might forget what the last unit that they converted was; trying to re-select the same menu item will do nothing.

Goals

Goal is for the user to be able to select a menu item and go to that view, even if they are already on that view.

Non-Goals

Right-clicking on a menu item should not close the menu because it could have been an accidental click.

Low-Fidelity Concept