Considering the direction of cursor movement for efficient traversal of cascading menus

Cascading menus are commonly seen in most GUI systems. However, people sometimes choose the wrong items by mistake, or become frustrated when submenus pop up unnecessarily. This paper proposes two methods for improving the usability of cascading menus. The first uses the direction of cursor movement to change the menu behavior: horizontal motion opens/closes submenus, while vertical motion changes the highlight within the current menu. This feature can reduce cursor movement errors. The second causes a submenu to pop up at the position where horizontal motion occurs. This is expected to reduce the length of the movement path for menu traversal. A user study showed that our methods reduce menu selection times, shorten search path lengths, and prevent unexpected submenu appearance and disappearance.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: UIST
• Authors: Masatomo Kobayashi, Takeo Igarashi
• Keywords: Cursor Movement, Horizontal Motion, Menu, UIST 2003