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

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 ActivationArea 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. Author Keywords Cascading pull-down menus, menu navigation, steering, selection, Force field menus, AAMU, Force-AAMU. ACM Classification ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Erum Tanvir, Jonathan Cullen, Pourang Irani, Andy Cockburn
• Keywords: Activation Area Menus, Broader Steering Path, CHI 2008, Human Computer Interaction, Pull-down Menus