Untangling the usability of fisheye menus

Kasper Hornbæk; Morten Hertzum

doi:10.1145/1275511.1275512

Untangling the usability of fisheye menus

Kasper Hornbæk, Morten Hertzum

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › peer review

Abstract

Udgivelsesdato: August

Originalsprog	Engelsk
Tidsskrift	ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction
Vol/bind	14
Udgave nummer	2
Antal sider	32
ISSN	1073-0516
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1145/1275511.1275512
Status	Udgivet - 2007

Bibliografisk note

Article 6

Link til dokument

10.1145/1275511.1275512

Citer dette

@article{8719ef905bbe11dca6e2000ea68e967b,

title = "Untangling the usability of fisheye menus",

abstract = "Fisheye menus have become a prominent example of fisheye interfaces, yet they contain several non-fisheye elements and have not been systematically evaluated. This study investigates whether fisheye menus are useful, and tries to untangle the impact on usability of the following properties of fisheye menus: the use of distortion, the index of letters for coarse navigation, and the focus-lock mode for accurate movement. Twelve participants took part in an experiment comparing fisheye menus with three alternative menu designs across known-item and browsing tasks as well as across alphabetical and categorical menu structures. The results show that for finding known items, conventional hierarchical menus are the most accurate and by far the fastest. In addition, participants rate the hierarchical menu more satisfying than the fisheye and multi-focus menus, but do not consistently prefer any one menu. For browsing tasks the menus differ with respect to neither accuracy nor selection time. Eye-movement data show that participants make little use of the non-focus regions of the fisheye menu, though they are a defining feature of fisheye interfaces. The non-focus regions are used more with the multi-focus menu, which enlarges important menu items in these regions. With the hierarchical menu, participants make shorter fixations and have shorter scanpaths, suggesting lower requirements for mental activity and visual search. We conclude by discussing why fisheye menus were inferior to the hierarchical menu and how both may be improved.",

keywords = "Fisheye menus, hierarchical menus, menu selection, focus+context interfaces, information visualization",

author = "Kasper Hornb{\ae}k and Morten Hertzum",

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year = "2007",

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language = "English",

volume = "14",

journal = "ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction",

issn = "1073-0516",

publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Untangling the usability of fisheye menus

AU - Hornbæk, Kasper

AU - Hertzum, Morten

N1 - Article 6

PY - 2007

Y1 - 2007

N2 - Fisheye menus have become a prominent example of fisheye interfaces, yet they contain several non-fisheye elements and have not been systematically evaluated. This study investigates whether fisheye menus are useful, and tries to untangle the impact on usability of the following properties of fisheye menus: the use of distortion, the index of letters for coarse navigation, and the focus-lock mode for accurate movement. Twelve participants took part in an experiment comparing fisheye menus with three alternative menu designs across known-item and browsing tasks as well as across alphabetical and categorical menu structures. The results show that for finding known items, conventional hierarchical menus are the most accurate and by far the fastest. In addition, participants rate the hierarchical menu more satisfying than the fisheye and multi-focus menus, but do not consistently prefer any one menu. For browsing tasks the menus differ with respect to neither accuracy nor selection time. Eye-movement data show that participants make little use of the non-focus regions of the fisheye menu, though they are a defining feature of fisheye interfaces. The non-focus regions are used more with the multi-focus menu, which enlarges important menu items in these regions. With the hierarchical menu, participants make shorter fixations and have shorter scanpaths, suggesting lower requirements for mental activity and visual search. We conclude by discussing why fisheye menus were inferior to the hierarchical menu and how both may be improved.

AB - Fisheye menus have become a prominent example of fisheye interfaces, yet they contain several non-fisheye elements and have not been systematically evaluated. This study investigates whether fisheye menus are useful, and tries to untangle the impact on usability of the following properties of fisheye menus: the use of distortion, the index of letters for coarse navigation, and the focus-lock mode for accurate movement. Twelve participants took part in an experiment comparing fisheye menus with three alternative menu designs across known-item and browsing tasks as well as across alphabetical and categorical menu structures. The results show that for finding known items, conventional hierarchical menus are the most accurate and by far the fastest. In addition, participants rate the hierarchical menu more satisfying than the fisheye and multi-focus menus, but do not consistently prefer any one menu. For browsing tasks the menus differ with respect to neither accuracy nor selection time. Eye-movement data show that participants make little use of the non-focus regions of the fisheye menu, though they are a defining feature of fisheye interfaces. The non-focus regions are used more with the multi-focus menu, which enlarges important menu items in these regions. With the hierarchical menu, participants make shorter fixations and have shorter scanpaths, suggesting lower requirements for mental activity and visual search. We conclude by discussing why fisheye menus were inferior to the hierarchical menu and how both may be improved.

KW - Fisheye menus

KW - hierarchical menus

KW - menu selection

KW - focus+context interfaces

KW - information visualization

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DO - 10.1145/1275511.1275512

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1073-0516

VL - 14

JO - ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction

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ER -