AAMU: adaptive activation area menus for improving selection in cascading pull-down menus

Authors:
Erum Tanvir;Jonathan Cullen;Pourang Irani;Andy Cockburn
Affiliations:
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MAN, Canada;University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MAN, Canada;University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MAN, Canada;University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2008

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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.