To design an effective menu, characteristics of both the user behaviors in using the menu and the device in which the menu works should be considered. Previous studies showed that two or three most-frequent items occupy more than 70 percent of total menu selections. Thus, diverse methods for spatially efficient presentation of high-frequency items, such as folded menus and split menus, have been suggested and applied. Most of the existing methods, however, have not been evaluated reflecting the condition of constrained physical space that is an important nature of modern electronic devices.
This study proposes new menu presentation methods, and experimentally investigates the effects of the proposed and existing methods under the space constraint. In the new presentation methods, high frequency items are represented by bold fonts or conspicuous colors so that they can be perceptually differentiated from low frequency items. This method is named perceptual aids in contrast to the existing methods that may be called spatial aids. To compare the new methods with the existing methods, an experiment was performed under two different space constraints. The results showed that the perceptual and spatial aids should be carefully applied to the menu design to be effective. Since according to the space constraints, the effects of perceptual and spatial aids was different. Even though same menu styles are applied, their effects are different depending on interface characteristics. Based on the results, a performance model of menu selection is built to help designers make decisions on choosing menu styles.
