Supporting menu design with radial layouts

  • Authors:
  • Krystian Samp;Stefan Decker

  • Affiliations:
  • National University of Ireland, Galway;National University of Ireland, Galway

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

One of the ways of decreasing selection times in displayed menus is through the use of radial layouts which shorten distances to the items and increase the item sizes. Previous work on radial menus does not demonstrate that radial layouts are beneficial for menu hierarchies. The paper focuses on this topic. We compare two main characteristics of radial and linear layouts: a) the time it takes to find an item (i.e. visual search time), b) the time it takes to navigate to an item (i.e. pointing time). We use objective and subjective measures, two menu sizes, three menu levels, one linear and three radial layout variations. We also present requirements and the Compact Radial Layout (CRL) design which supports menu hierarchies. We assess its performance for novice and expert users.