Bento Box Menus: A Better Way to Navigate Lists

Go above and beyond traditional menus

Imagine you're wondering where to go to find what you're looking for on an app or website. There are several categories in the top bar, each displaying a list of items. You need to determine which category to click on and locate the item in the list. This requires a significant cognitive load to accomplish.

Navigating a menu shouldn't feel like a chore. Unfortunately, most users become frustrated when they have to navigate multiple dropdown menus. For this reason, an individual list for each category isn't the best way to display a navigation menu.

Even a mega menu, which displays all the categories and items in a single comprehensive list, isn't much better. Seeing a multitude of categories and items suddenly appear in your visual field at once can be overwhelming for most users. They still need to expend time and energy scanning each list to find what they want.