Improving Selection in Cascading Pull-Down Menus

Abstract

Selecting items in cascading pull-down menus is a frequent task in most GUIs. These selections involve two major components: steering and selection, with the steering component being the most time-consuming and error-prone. We describe a new technique, called Adaptive Activation- Area Menu (AAMU) that eliminate corner steering. AAMUs contain an enlarged activation area which dynamically resizes itself providing a broader steering path for menu navigation. We also combined AAMUs with Force-field menus, to create Force-AAMUs. We empirically demonstrate that AAMUs and Force-AAMUs outperformed the current default menu. We also compared performances of various other menus including Enlarged activation area menus (EMUs) and Gesture based selection with mouse as an input device. Overall, users show higher satisfaction rates for AAMUs over other menu designs.

Video

Download the Improving Selection in Cascading Pull-Down Menus video file.

Slideshow

Download the Improving Selection in Cascading Pull-Down Menus slideshow.

Publisher Link

http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357270

Citation

Erum Tanvir, Jonathan Cullen, Pourang Irani and Andy Cockburn. 2008. Improving Selection in Cascading Pull-Down Menus. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08), 1381-1384.

Bibtext Entry

@INPROCEEDINGS { tanvir08,
    AUTHOR = { Erum Tanvir and Jonathan Cullen and Pourang Irani and Andy Cockburn },
    TITLE = { Improving Selection in Cascading Pull-Down Menus },
    BOOKTITLE = { Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08) },
    YEAR = { 2008 },
    PAGES = { 1381--1384 },
    DOI = { 10.1145/1357054.1357270 },
}