Improving Menu Interaction for Cluttered Tabletop Setups with User-Drawn Path Menus

Many digital tabletop systems have a graphical user interface (GUI) that features context (or pop-up) menus. While linear and pie menus are commonly used for direct pen and touch interaction, their appearance can be problematic on a digital tabletop display, where physical objects might occlude menu items. We propose a user-drawn path menu that appears along a custom path to avoid such occlusions. This paper introduces four different metaphors for user-drawn context menus: the Fan Out Menu, the Card Deck Menu, the Pearl String Menu, and the Trail Menu. It also presents the results we acquired from a user study, where participants were able to work faster on cluttered tabletop setups when using our user-drawn menus.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: TABLETOP
• Authors: Daniel Leithinger, Michael Haller
• Keywords: Digital Tabletop, Many Digital Tabletop, TABLETOP 2007, User-drawn Path Menu