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From: alan@ux.cs.man.ac.uk (Alan Wills)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: navigating through menus with colour
Message-ID: <6295@ux.cs.man.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Jun 89 15:21:26 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK.
Lines: 35
In-reply-to: perlman@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu's message of 6 Jun 89 04:51:49 GMT

In article <572@hfserver.hfnet.bt.co.uk> davet@hfserver.hfnet.bt.co.uk (David Travis) writes:
>Options are recalled by their approximate
>spatial position in the menu.

One way of making the most of this is to make your menu octagonal.  The
menu appears centred on the cursor; you select by wiping outwards in the
appropriate direction.  So it looks rather like this (but I can only draw a
hexagonal one in ascii!):

                    /----------\
                   /  \ item1 / \
                  / i6 \____ /i2 \
                  ------____ -----
                  \    /     \i3 /
                   \  /  i4   \ /
                    \----------/

The centre is a "next 8 options" button, for when there are more than 8
items in the menu (so when you get used to a particular menu, you know to
click twice for a particular item); but a better practice is to nest menus
and cascade them.  After a while, users get fast at the sequence of clicks
and wipes needed for a familiar item: the system has to be able to cope
with users going through them quickly.

Lon Barfield at Manchester invented this.  I think there's a local report
on it, which I can look out for anyone interested.

Alan Wills
061-275 6135
Dept of Computer Science
University of Manchester
M13 9PL
-- 
Alan Wills
+44-61-273 7121 x5699