Xref: utzoo comp.cog-eng:551 comp.windows.misc:574 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watcgl!lrbartram From: lrbartram@watcgl.waterloo.edu (lyn bartram) Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: Using kinesthetic memory for human interfaces Message-ID: <4989@watcgl.waterloo.edu> Date: 25 Jun 88 03:47:27 GMT References: <3535@pdn.uucp><4988@watcgl.waterloo.edu> Reply-To: lrbartram@watcgl.waterloo.edu (lyn bartram) Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 37 There have been several discussions about the proposed advantages of "pie", or radial selection, menu systems lately in various newsgroups ( comp.cog-eng and comp.windows.misc are two that come to mind ). A lot of attention has been paid to the fact (? as yet not *completely* proven) that kinesthetic memory is a powerful aid to menu selection, often more effective than simple conscious recognition of that which is to be selected. I'm not debating this: we have been using some form of radial menus in various applications in our lab for several years, and as a user myself, i find them great. However, the use of these tools bring a whole lot of interesting questions to the fore : what are the most effective selection mechanisms, for example? Slide only? Slide and click? Depress, slide and release? Double click? At a single level, this might seem trivial, but as soon as one wishes to take advantage of cascaded menus, it is no longer so immaterial. I have noticed a claim that using radial selection in cascaded form is far preferable to using regular popup/cascaded menus, but i am a bit dubious about this, and would like to see some solid empirical evidence.... after all, the big bonus about radial selection, in layman's terms, is that one uses direction rather than distance or position to get to the selection point. It seems to me that cascading imposes some of the distance constraint. Another point is that of form: as i mentioned a few months ago, is a circle preferable to a {hex/oct/non}agon ? How big does the "dead" area in the centre have to be? One of the applications in our lab, a paint program, uses an octagonal( well, it may be hexagonal by now) menu, since this means that each selectable space is big enough to serve also as a form of *slider*: when the selections are colours, the user can "stir" the cursor on the selection clockwise for more saturation, and counter-clockwise for less, providing a very nice and intuitive interaction technique. I know that there is some very pertinent work in ergonomics studies of instrument positions on control panels, et al, to do with immediate access to information and selection of particular tools. Can anyone point me to some specific references? It appears that the time has come for some rigorous testing of radial selection techniques, and it would be nice to know what previous studies in related fields have to tell us about the use of kinesthetic memory in system design.