THE GRID MENU: EFFICIENT AND ROBUST SELECTION OF MENU-ITEMS

摘要

With the increasing use of e-business web sites, users are often asked to select a menu-item from a largenumbers of options. In this research, the pull-down menu, fisheye menu and grid menu were tested tocompare the performance time, error rate, user satisfaction, simplicity, user friendliness, usefulness, andoverall user preference of each menu type. The grid menu was more efficient in selection speed than thepull-down and fisheye menus when the number of menu-items was 50 and 100. The time needed tochoose a menu-item with a grid menu was less affected by the size of menu and the physical location ofan item within a menu. The pull-down and the grid menus were considered to be more satisfactory,simple, user friendly, and useful than the fisheye menu. 42.3 percent of subjects indicated that the gridmenu was their preferred selection tool among the menus. The grid menu is an efficient and robustaltemative menu choice for small and middle size menu lists.