Transfer of knowledge across computer command menus

Two experiments are reported that examine the effects of menu organization and command naming on performance within and across computer command menus. The work on performance within menus extends prior work on information retrieval (IR) menus to computer command menus. We found that selection of computer commands conforms to the same laws that govern selection of IR categories and object names, with alphabetic organization leading to shorter search times in early trials when users knew the names of the commands. When users did not know the exact names of the commands, the functional organization led to shorter search times. More importantly, we found that the knowledge of the functional organization transferred from one application menu to another, thereby reducing search time in the menu of the second application.     

Adapting menu layout to tasks

Menus are an increasingly popular style of user-system interface. Although many aspects of menu design can affect user performance (e.g. item names and selection methods), the organization of items in menus is a particularly salient aspect of their design. Unfortunately, empirical studies of menu layout have yet to resolve the basic question of how menus should be organized to produce optimal performance. Furthermore, a disturbingly common finding has been that any initial effects of menu layout disappear with practice. Thus it is tempting to conclude that menu organization is not important or that it only affects performance during learning. In this paper we present some reasons to doubt this conclusion. In particular, we have found persistent effects of layout with multiple-item selection tasks, in contrast with studies employing a single-item selection paradigm. The results of a controlled study comparing various menu designs (fast-food keyboards) show that the types of tasks to be performed by users must be considered in organizing items in menus and that there may be sustained effects of menu organization with some tasks. In addition, the results of this study support the use of a formal methodology based on user knowledge for menu design. By comparing the performance of subjects using menus designed using our methodology with the performance of subjects using “personalized” menus, we were able to demonstrate the general superiority of our method for designing menus, and for tailoring menus to meet task requirements as well.     

Designing menus for the Chinese population: horizontal or vertical?

This research investigated the language differences between English and Chinese and the implication on the design of menu presentations for computer interfaces. Eighty Chinese subjects and twenty American subjects participated in this experiment. The results of this research indicated that the menu layout should be congruent with the language being used. Horizontal English menus result in better performance than vertical English menus. However, vertical Chinese menus result in better performance than horizontal Chinese menus. It is important to design menus based on the language being used rather than the linguistic traditions of the population using the interface. The effects of menu layout also depend on whether the search task items were presented in English or Chinese.     

Adaptively shortened pull down menus: location knowledge and selection efficiency

Adaptively shortened pull down menus, as introduced by Microsoft with the ‘personalized menus’ in Office 2000? and assumed to speed up menu selection, are examined. Displacement of items in this adaptively changing menu is argued to conflict with the user's location knowledge, leading to increased selection times and error rates. In a controlled experiment with 31 subjects, a standard menu was compared with a shortened and a gapped menu variant. The gapped menu variant served to distinguish effects from displacement and effects resulting from reduced item number. Selection times and error rates were smaller for the standard menu than for the shortened variant. The gapped menu, whilst it has longer distances, was faster than the shortened menu, but slower than the standard menu. According to our findings, the assumption that adaptively shortened pull down menus facilitate menu selection is weakened.     

An empirical comparison of menu selection, command entry and combined modes of computer control

Command entry and menu selection control modes, along with a combination of the two, were compared using objective performance and subjective preference measures. Experienced as well as novice users of an interactive computer aided design system participated in the study. Although command entry produced performance that was superior to the other two modes, there was a strong user preference for the combined mode. Therefore, it is recommended that combined modes of control be considered for future systems, as long as there is a means to deactivate the menus. These results dispel the notion that menus are necessarily viewed as a hindrance by experienced users of a computer system.     

Improving cascading menu selections with adaptive activation areas

Cascading menus are the most commonly used hierarchical menus in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). These menus, however, tend to have elongated paths with corner steering, which can result in navigation difficulties. To resolve the corner steering problem, most current cascading menus implement an explicit time delay between the cursor entering or leaving a parent menu item and posting/unposting the associated menu. In this paper, we present adaptive activation-area menus (AAMUs), a technique to improve cascading menu performance by providing a localized triangular activation area between the menu and the child submenu. This triangular activation area aims to overcome the corner steering problem by permitting quick diagonal navigation without imposing a time delay.We describe four experiments designed to refine and validate the AAMU technique. Our first experiment shows that AAMUs improve item selection performance in comparison to traditional menus and a number of competing techniques, including gesture-based menus and enlarged activation-area menus (EMUs). Our second and third experiments reveal, however, that in a searching task, where the user has to look through multiple submenus to find the target, the basic AAMU design suffers from a “cursor trapping” problem, where the user has to move the cursor out of the activation area prior to exploring another submenu. An evaluation of an improved AAMU design shows that it is as fast as or faster than traditional menus and EMUs for both selection and searching tasks.     

VB自绘菜单流程分析

Visual Basic 6.0中使用"菜单编辑器"只能创建"平面"菜单,要得到附带图标、界面美观的菜单,需要调用API函数进行自绘菜单,而主菜单与下拉式菜单的触发事件不一样,需要响应不同的消息,使绘制的复杂性大大增加.在具体绘制过程中,首先确定消息机制,然后选取合适的API函数菜,对于菜单中经常使用的方框线条等基本图形先构造绘图函数,通过主函数调用绘图函数的方式来简化问题的复杂性,巧妙地实现了自绘菜单的期望效果.     

Finding Information on a Menu: Linking Menu Organization to the User's Goals

Design paradigms often ignore the diverse goals users bring to the computer interface. Any human-computer interaction can be viewed as a marriage of two systems: The user begins the interaction by formulating an information goal, and the computer software meets that goal with a sometimes complex list of potential topic areas. The user then accesses that topic list through the computer interface. Part of the act of accessing the topic list is selecting a potential topic, and this action is often supported by a menu interface. Although research is pervasive on how best to organize menu items to facilitate learning, search speed, and reduced selection errors, little has been done to examine the impact of different types of user goals or cues on a menu's effectiveness. In a study using three distinct cues-direct match, synonym, and iconic - and two menu organizations - alphabetical and functional-data suggest that (a) the functional menu is more effective than the alphabetical menu for the synonym and iconic cues, (b) learning occurs with both menu designs (i.e., selection speed increases rapidly across the five trial blocks), and (c) users make fewer errors with the functionally organized menu. The results, in general, encourage more rigorous investigation of the interaction between the tasks users bring to menu interfaces and the optimal design of those menus.     

Complementary menus: Combining adaptable and adaptive approaches for menu interface

This study proposes a method of coupling adaptable and adaptive approaches to the design of menus. The proposed complementary menu types incorporate both adaptability and adaptivity by dividing and allocating menu adaptation roles to the user and the system. Four different types of interface adaptation (i.e., adaptable with/without system support and adaptive with/without user control) were defined. They were implemented in a hypothetical prototype mobile phone via a hotlist (an additional collection of quickly accessible items). A controlled lab experiment was conducted to compare the menu types and investigate the effects of the system support in the adaptable menus and the user control in the adaptive menus. Twenty subjects participated in the experiment and performed menu selection tasks. Both performance and user satisfaction measures were collected. The results showed that adaptable and adaptive menus were superior to the traditional one in terms of both performance and user satisfaction. Providing system support to the adaptable menu not only increased the users’ perception of the efficiency of selection, but also reduced the menu adaptation time. Important implications for the design of menus are described and valuable insights into the menu interface adaptation were gained from the quantitative and qualitative analyses of the experimental results.

Relevance to industry

The evaluation experiment conducted in this study may provide valuable information to designers of adaptive or adaptable menus. Adding system support to adaptable menu would be an attractive option to consider. Also, the results of a user survey provide useful information to the practitioners in mobile phone industry on the features users accessed most frequently.     

Better design of menu selection systems through cognitive psychology and human factors

OBJECTIVE: In this study, I seek to emphasize the contributions of cognitive psychology and human factors research in the design of menu selection systems. BACKGROUND: Menu selection systems are used in computer interfaces to allow users to enter choices, set parameters, and navigate to items, functions, and locations. Designers of these systems have many choices concerning the organizational structure and layout of the menu interface. METHOD: I review several of these concerning hierarchies of menus, organization and clustering of items, and item distinctiveness. Special attention is given to cases in which designer's intuition differed from theory and experimental results. RESULT: Cognitive psychology and human factors have contributed both theory and empirical research that have helped to resolve differences of opinion and establish general principles for design. CONCLUSION: It is argued that cognitive psychology has contributed substantially to the design of better menu selection systems. APPLICATION: It is imperative that designers continue to apply these findings to interfaces that they develop and that researchers continue to study the characteristics and efficacy of innovative menu designs as they appear.     

Integration of Adaptable and Adaptive Approaches for Interface Personalization Through Collaborative Menu

This article examines different user-system collaboration models in the adaptation of a menu interface. Four collaboration models were implemented on a prototype of mobile phone menu: (a) basic collaboration with no system support (for user adaptation) and no user control (over system adaptation), (b) system support only, (c) user control only, and (d) system support plus user control. The prototype mobile phone menu includes a hotlist (a quickly accessible collection of menu items) as well as a hierarchical menu. The hotlist is collaborative, because it combines adaptable and adaptive approaches by allowing both the user and the system to manage the items in it. A controlled experiment compared different types of collaborative menus in order to investigate the effects of system support and user control. Twenty participants performed menu selection tasks in the experiment, and both performance and subjective measures were taken. The results showed that, in a certain condition, the system support and the user control improved the user performance when applied independently, but their effects were not additive. Although the effects disappeared when the selection frequency distribution changed, the system support was preferred by most of the users. The advantages and disadvantages of the collaborative menus and implications for the adaptation of menus are discussed.     

The importance of item distinctiveness on performance using a menu selection system

Novice computer users searched an interactive menu system given either an explicit target phrase or a subject-matter topic. Two menus were used: an original menu as designed by a commercial timesharing service and a slightly modified version intended to increase the distinctiveness of same-level items. Subjects acquired knowledge about the system through one of four study methods: trial-and-error exploration, study of a diagram of the menu structure, trial-and-error exploration with documentation, or study of the diagram with documentation. Subjects using the modified menu (a) took less time per problem: lpar;b) found targets in a more direct path: and (c) gave up on fewer problems than subjects using the original menu. These results are consistent with a theory of choice that predicts that decision processes are facilitated by the distinctiveness of the alternatives. Overall the effect of study method was not significant. For highly meaningful menus, type of exposure, whether trial-and-error or study of the global tree, does not seem to matter.     

Location of navigation menus in websites: an experimental study with Arabic users

While Arabic users represent by far the fastest growing language population on the Internet, research about how the peculiarities of Arabic language may shape users’ web interactions is still scarce. The preferences of Arabic users for menu location in websites have been studied. Two competing arguments have been proposed regarding the best location of menus in websites: conventional design (navigation menu should be placed on that side where users expect it based on previous experience) and reading direction (navigation menu should be placed on that side where readers are used to start off reading, so that the navigation menu is likely to be attended first). In an experiment, twenty-five participants with Arabic as mother language (who also spoke English) were briefly presented with screenshots from websites presented in Arabic or English and with menus located either on the left or the right, and rated their perceived visual appeal, usability, and trustworthiness. Results showed that participants judged the Arabic websites more positive when menus were located in the right- rather than in the left-hand side. In contrast, no differences for menu location were observed for English websites. These results are discussed in light of the conventional design and reading direction hypothesis and with regard to their implications for the design of Arabic websites.     

Mouse Selection Versus Voice Selection of Menu Items

Subjects completed a menu selection task using mouse and spoken language technologies for menu sizes that are powers of 2 from 2 to 256. It was found that mouse selection was faster than spoken language selection for menu sizes of 32 or less for most subjects. For small N, mouse selection was about three times faster. Spoken language selection was as fast or faster for menus of size 64 or larger. The trade-off size, approximately 64, was different for various subjects, but not greatly different. Data was gathered for words with one, two, and three syllables with the result that the trade-off size was the same for all three, but the error characteristics for spoken inputs were worse for shorter words, as would be expected.     

Self-adapting menus for CAD software

CAD programs usually employ menus for enhancing user-machine interaction. This paper describes an approach which enables the user to obtain improved menu organization. The approach is based on recording the sequence of operations which take place during a design session or several sessions, and modifying the menus accordingly. The user is also allowed to further modify the menus interactively. This capability improves the performance of the designer, especially when using complex CAD or expert systems which offer a large variety of options. The self-adapting menus simplify the selection process, and result in custom-made software which is more suited for the individual user.     

Using predictors to partition menu selection times

Selection times of drop-down menus are in many ways influenced by cognitive and motor processes of the user and by design variables of the menu. Since the number of these variables is too large, the contribution of individual variables to selection time cannot be assessed by using factorial designs. Multiple regression is introduced to solve this problem. The technique uses selection times as criterions and a set of general menu characteristics as predictors. The non-standardized slopes β report the increase ( or decrease) in selection time which can be assessed for each predictor. In a first experiment, the validity of the technique was demonstrated replicating various well-known effects in a mouse-driven editor. For example, the selection times increased with the number of subordinate menu items or atypical items. Further, due to motor components of the mouse movement, selection times depended on the spatial position of an item within the menu. In a second experiment, mouse selection was replaced by key selection to stress cognitive processes contributing to response times. The technique yielded results that were sensitive to this variation. Limitations of the technique are discussed.     

An evaluation of jump-ahead techniques in menu selection

Menu selection systems provide a means of selecting operations and retrieving information which requires little training and reduces the need for memorizing complex command sequences. However, a major disadvantage of many menu selection systems is that experienced users cannot traverse the menu tree significantly faster than novices. A common solution to this problem is to provide the menu selection system with a jump-ahead capability.

The purpose of this research was to evaluate two jump-ahead methods (type-ahead and direct-access). In the type-ahead method the user anticipates a selection on each of several successive menus and enters as many selections at one time as desired. In the direct-access method, each menu frame is assigned a unique name which the user must enter to locate it.

Thirty-two students were given training on an information retrieval system for college course information and were required to learn the two jump-ahead methods in a counterbalanced design. The direct-access method resulted in fewer traversals to learn the system, lower error rates, and reduced learning time. The subjective impressions, obtained from post-experiment questionnaires and oral comments, indicated that the direct-access jump-ahead method was also preferred in a frequently used menu selection system.     

The importance of item distinctiveness on performance using a menu selection system

Abstract

Novice computer users searched an interactive menu system given either an explicit target phrase or a subject-matter topic. Two menus were used: an original menu as designed by a commercial timesharing service and a slightly modified version intended to increase the distinctiveness of same-level items. Subjects acquired knowledge about the system through one of four study methods: trial-and-error exploration, study of a diagram of the menu structure, trial-and-error exploration with documentation, or study of the diagram with documentation. Subjects using the modified menu (a) took less time per problem: lpar;b) found targets in a more direct path: and (c) gave up on fewer problems than subjects using the original menu. These results are consistent with a theory of choice that predicts that decision processes are facilitated by the distinctiveness of the alternatives. Overall the effect of study method was not significant. For highly meaningful menus, type of exposure, whether trial-and-error or study of the global tree, does not seem to matter.     

Comparison of 3D and 2D menus for cell phones

Few prior studies have directly compared 3D and 2D menus for cell phones. Because the technology available for cell phone interfaces has changed in recent years, interface guidelines for cell phones need to be re-evaluated, especially with regard to the use of 3D interfaces. In the present study, we first compared performance of tasks for menus with different breadths using three 3D menus (revolving stage, 3D carousel, and collapsible cylindrical tree) shown on the small display screen of an iPhone® simulator. Performance was best with the revolving stage menu, and there was a nonsignificant tendency for it to be rated as preferred by the participants. Then, we compared the 3D revolving stage menu to a 2D overview menu, for tasks of different complexity and menus of different breadths, on an actual iPhone. The 3D menu was preferred by users at high breadth levels, and the 2D menu showed better performance than the 3D menu with low memory load. From the results, recommendations for the design of menus for small displays were developed.