

Article 1369 of comp.cog-eng:
Path: mimsy!tank!ncar!ames!lll-winken!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!pan!aratar!chac
>From: [email-masked] (Chuck Clanton)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Menu Interaction Techniques
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 Sep 89 07:48:18 GMT
References: <[email-masked]> <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Chuck Clanton)
Organization: Adasoft AG, Solothurn, Switzerland
Lines: 27

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (James H. Coombs) writes:
>I have not experienced the equivalent of touch typing
>with menu selection.  D. A. Norman is right on target: menus are
>optimized for selection but pessimized for performance.

this is my experience as well.  on frequently used menus and slow 
machines, i can get the cursor (and my eyes) close to the right item 
before it appears but i still must see the item and correct before 
clicking on it.  i have a very small amount of experience with pie 
menus and wonder if they are better.  people who use have used them
extensively speak of using "muscle memory" to "navigate" through the
pie menus they are familiar with.

it seems to me that the ergonomics of a linear array of menu items 
resembles that of a control panel composed of a row of identical 
switches.  it is easy to make mistakes without careful visual
verification of a choice.  but a keyboard is just a long row of
identical switches too.  it is different only so long as the hands 
stay on the home row such that the keys are distinguished by position 
relative to a given fingers home position.  whenever i move my hands 
to the mouse, i have exactly the same problem that i have with menu 
item selection--i must focus my attention on the keyboard to insure 
that i recover the correct hand position.  so, it certainly seems like 
a reasonable hypothesis that pie menus with items in differing directions 
relative to the starting position might provide more of the performance 
and selection characteristics of "touch typing" and be less like the 
linear array of switches of normal menus.