Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!pan!aratar!chac From: chac@aratar.UUCP (Chuck Clanton) Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng Subject: Re: Menu Interaction Techniques Message-ID: <344@aratar.UUCP> Date: 28 Sep 89 07:48:18 GMT References: <2722@trantor.harris-atd.com> <16179@brunix.UUCP> Reply-To: chac@aratar.UUCP (Chuck Clanton) Organization: Adasoft AG, Solothurn, Switzerland Lines: 27 In article <16179@brunix.UUCP> jhc@iris.brown.edu (James H. Coombs) writes: >I have not experienced the equivalent of touch typing >with menu selection. D. A. Norman is right on target: menus are >optimized for selection but pessimized for performance. this is my experience as well. on frequently used menus and slow machines, i can get the cursor (and my eyes) close to the right item before it appears but i still must see the item and correct before clicking on it. i have a very small amount of experience with pie menus and wonder if they are better. people who use have used them extensively speak of using "muscle memory" to "navigate" through the pie menus they are familiar with. it seems to me that the ergonomics of a linear array of menu items resembles that of a control panel composed of a row of identical switches. it is easy to make mistakes without careful visual verification of a choice. but a keyboard is just a long row of identical switches too. it is different only so long as the hands stay on the home row such that the keys are distinguished by position relative to a given fingers home position. whenever i move my hands to the mouse, i have exactly the same problem that i have with menu item selection--i must focus my attention on the keyboard to insure that i recover the correct hand position. so, it certainly seems like a reasonable hypothesis that pie menus with items in differing directions relative to the starting position might provide more of the performance and selection characteristics of "touch typing" and be less like the linear array of switches of normal menus.