ben@umcp-cs.UUCP (11/07/83)
Subject: menus Newsgroups: cog-eng Distribution:all I was pleased by the lively discussion about menus on cog-eng and delighted that people are eager to debate the merits of alternate design strategies. About twenty experiments have been done by various people on design issues, but this is not widely known. I've written a review paper (40 pages) on menus experiments and I'd be glad to send it to you if you tell me your mailing address. Second, as far as I am concerned, if a menu system does not allow frequent users to go directly to the screen they want, the system is poorly designed. Several strategies exist (described in my review) but there has not been an experimental comparison. I and several other people have invented the typeahead approach - or as I call it sometimes the BLT approach. Menu items are single letter mnemonics and you can typeahead as many choices as you know. The novice sees the system as a menu system and as he/she increases in frequency of use, becomes an expert who sees the system as a command language. This allows graceful evolution in learning, avoiding the discontinuity of switching to a command language. The mnemonic letters do acquire meaning rapidly and the strings of letters are relatively easy to remember. We have devised ways of mixing menu choices with data entry. Finally I am sympathetic to the proposed variation of full words instead of single letters, but would prefer the single letter strategy. I hope we can all get past the argumentation stage and offer data which support conjectures and quantify the benefits in learning time, speed of performance, rate of errors, and subjective satisfaction.