Wanyu Liu
Gilles Bailly
Andrew Howes
ABSTRACT
While it is well known that menu usage follows a Zipfian distribution, there has been little interest in the impact of menu item frequency distribution on user's behavior. In this note, we explore the effects of frequency distribution on average menu performance as well as individual item performance. We compare three frequency distributions of menu item usage: Uniform; Zipfian with s=1 and Zipfian with s=2. The results show that (1) user's behavior is sensitive to different frequency distributions at both menu and item level; (2) individual item selection time depends on, not only its frequency, but also the frequency of other items in the menu. Finally, we discuss how these findings might have impacts on menu design, empirical studies and menu modeling.
Supplemental Material
- Caroline Appert and Shumin Zhai. 2009. Using Strokes As Command Shortcuts: Cognitive Benefits and Toolkit Support. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2289--2298. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1519052 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Gilles Bailly, Antti Oulasvirta, Duncan P. Brumby, and Andrew Howes. 2014. Model of Visual Search and Selection Time in Linear Menus. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3865--3874. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557093 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Suresh K. Bhavnani, Bonnie E. John, and Ulrich Flemming. 1999. The strategic use of CAD: an empirically inspired, theory-based course. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 183--190. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Michael D. Byrne, John R. Anderson, Scott Douglass, and Michael Matessa. 1999. Eye Tracking the Visual Search of Click-down Menus. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '99). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 402--409. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/302979.303118 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Xiuli Chen, Gilles Bailly, Duncan P. Brumby, Antti Oulasvirta, and Andrew Howes. 2015. The Emergence of Interactive Behavior: A Model of Rational Menu Search. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4217--4226. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702483 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Andy Cockburn, Carl Gutwin, and Saul Greenberg. 2007. A Predictive Model of Menu Performance. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 627--636. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1240624.1240723 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Andy Cockburn, Carl Gutwin, Joey Scarr, and Sylvain Malacria. 2014. Supporting Novice to Expert Transitions in User Interfaces. ACM Comput. Surv. 47, 2, Article 31 (Nov. 2014), 36 pages. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2659796 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Stephen R. Ellis and Robert J. Hitchcock. 1986. The emergence of Zipf's law: Spontaneous encoding optimization by users of a command language. IEEE transactions on systems, man, and cybernetics 16, 3 (1986), 423--427. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Leah Findlater and Joanna McGrenere. 2004. A Comparison of Static, Adaptive, and Adaptable Menus. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 89--96. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/985692.985704 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Saul Greenberg and Ian H. Witten. 1993. Supporting command reuse: empirical foundations and principles. (1993).Google Scholar
- Tovi Grossman, Pierre Dragicevic, and Ravin Balakrishnan. 2007. Strategies for Accelerating On-line Learning of Hotkeys. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1591--1600. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1240624.1240865 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Stephen José Hanson, Robert E. Kraut, and James M. Farber. 1984. Interface design and multivariate analysis of UNIX command use. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 2, 1 (1984), 42--57. Google ScholarDigital Library
- William E. Hick. 1952. On the rate of gain of information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 4, 1 (1952), 11--26. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Andrew Howes, Stephen J. Payne, and Amelia Woodward. 2000. The Trouble with Shortcuts. In CHI '00 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '00). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 267--268. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/633292.633448 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ray Hyman. 1953. Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time. Journal of experimental psychology 45, 3 (1953), 188.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Gordon Kurtenbach and William Buxton. 1993. The Limits of Expert Performance Using Hierarchic Marking Menus. In Proceedings of the INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '93). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 482--487. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/169059.169426 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Roy Lachman, Janet L. Lachman, and Earl C. Butterfield. 2015. Cognitive psychology and information processing: An introduction. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
- Dong-Seok Lee and Wan Chul Yoon. 2004. Quantitative results assessing design issues of selection-supportive menus. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 33, 1 (2004), 41--52. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Justin Matejka, Wei Li, Tovi Grossman, and George Fitzmaurice. 2009. CommunityCommands: command recommendations for software applications. In Proceedings of the 22nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology. ACM, 193--202. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Brad Mehlenbacher, Thomas M. Duffy, and James Palmer. 1989. Finding information on a menu: linking menu organization to the user's goals. Human-Computer Interaction 4, 3 (1989), 231--251. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Erik L. Nilsen. 1996. Perceptual-Motor Control in Human-Computer Interaction. Technical Report. DTIC Document.Google Scholar
- Stephen J. Payne and Andrew Howes. 2013. Adaptive interaction: A utility maximization approach to understanding human interaction with technology. Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics 6, 1 (2013), 1--111. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Peter Pirolli. 2007. Information foraging theory: Adaptive interaction with information. Oxford University Press. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Andrew Sears and Ben Shneiderman. 1994. Split Menus: Effectively Using Selection Frequency to Organize Menus. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 1, 1 (March 1994), 27--51. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/174630.174632 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Tim Wifall, Eliot Hazeltine, and J. Toby Mordkoff. 2015. The roles of stimulus and response uncertainty in forced-choice performance: an amendment to Hick/Hyman Law. Psychological research (2015), 1--11.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Effects of Frequency Distribution on Linear Menu Performance
Recommendations
A predictive model of menu performance
CHI '07: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMenus are a primary control in current interfaces, but there has been relatively little theoretical work to model their performance. We propose a model of menu performance that goes beyond previous work by incorporating components for Fitts' Law ...
Model of visual search and selection time in linear menus
CHI '14: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsThis paper presents a novel mathematical model for visual search and selection time in linear menus. Assuming two visual search strategies, serial and directed, and a pointing sub-task, it captures the change of performance with five fac- tors: 1) menu ...
Split menus: effectively using selection frequency to organize menus
When some items in a menu are selected more frequently than others, as is often the case, designers or individual users may be able to speed performance and improve preference ratings by placing several high-frequency items at the top of the menu. ...
Comments