Menu Driven Interface - Essay Example

?Menu Driven Interface In Human Computer Interaction, the user dialog strategies help the users to intermingle or communicate with an interactive computer system. Principally, there are three (3) general dialog strategies currently used to keep up a correspondence with a bilateral computer system and these three (3) strategies include: the menu driven, question / answer and command driven interfaces. From the three strategies the first two (menu driven and question / answer) are commonly over the World Wide Web (WWW), however, the command line interfaces are mostly used in the stand alone computer systems. The Graphical User Interface is used to develop the menu driven and question / answer strategy to make the interface easily understandable by the user. Menu in Graphical User Interface plays an imperative for human interaction with the computers. Menu driven interfaces facilitate the users by providing a catalogue of options for selection to navigate from one page to another. Several strategies and approaches have been developed to create or select menu for the user interface of the computer application. And one of the strategies for the development of menu-driven interface is recognized as user dialog. In user dialog strategy, the control of the computer application is transferred back and forth between the computer application and the user. The user passes a command to the computer application by selecting a menu item and the computer application respond by executing the command. Usually, the related menu items of the computer application’s user interface are categorized into the groups that can be displayed in the dialogue boxes. This approach facilitates the users to search and navigate to the pages of the computer application (Senn, 2009). Importance / Popularity of Menu Driven Interface There are various reasons for the popularity of the menu driven interfaces and most of the imperative reasons is the high level of usability. The users do not require remembering the commands for using the software application efficiently; therefore, the users can effectively utilize the computer application easily. Furthermore, the menu driven graphical user interface is suitable for even the novice computer for not generating the errors, as they do not require typing the commands. The effort required for utilizing the GUI application is much reduced as compared to the command line interface, hence, it can be stated that the productivity of the users is increased. Above all, a user guide is available to facilitate and help the users to successfully employ the application and achieve the required objectives of the computer application deployment. The menu driven interfaces are becoming more popular even in modern computing age because of their appealing features. The menu driven interface is not only beneficial for the users or clients, however, the software development companies also find it advantageous as they do not require developing the menu again and again. The software components are developed once and reused to development cost and time. Moreover, comparatively less training is required to use the computer system; therefore, the software companies can save the cost of extensive trainings. Hence, keeping in view the facts, it has been identified that the graphical user interface having menus has made the human computer interaction simpler and easier (Norman, 1991). Strategies of Menu Driven Interface So far diverse categorizations of the menu driven interfaces have been developed, however, mainly the menu driven interface can be categorized into three (3) major strategies include: the full screen menus, the bar and pull down menus and pop-up menus. These different strategies can be used to make menu driven interfaces visually more appealing as well as user friendly. The full screen menus usually represented on the entire screen of the computer application and the user selects the options given on the screen. The Pop-up menus (may also be called as user dialogue) are presented in the boxes with a list of options and one of the options is already selected by the computer application. Onwards, the user can select appropriate or required option to navigate diverse screens of the software application (Daniel, Phillip and Thomas, 1995). The advantages and disadvantages are associated with each of the menu driven strategy. For illustration, the Pull down menu can easily develop by the graphic designers as a list of options appears for a user and the designers do not need to work for developing a straightforward list. On the other hand, the user can suffer various problems in using the Pull down menu include: the users are not being provided with a visual clue, the menu may obstruct the user’s other view area and the user may undergo of searching / struggling more to find out an appropriate selection from the nested list of options. Alternatives for Menu Driven Interface Design A variety of alternatives to the menu driven interface are available, however, it is quite difficult to state whether these alternatives would replace menu driven interfaces relatively being old technology. There are many user interfaces which have still not been completely replaced by the menu driven interfaces include: the command line interfaces, direct manipulation interfaces and special purpose interfaces. Even being the old technology of these interfaces in many applications can yet be seen in our computer systems which are more reliable comparatively. For example, the operating system is yet command based includes: MS DOS in windows, LINUX, etc. Direct manipulation interfaces (DMI), the users are presented with the real time implementation of their direct instruction. As the interface / information manipulations are being done by the direct actions, therefore, explicit commands are not required in the direct manipulation interfaces. An appropriate example of the direct manipulation interfaces is the resizing of the rectangle by dragging the corners with the mouse. A recent example is the implementation of the text style Microsoft Office 2007 / 2010 which changes the text accordingly. The embedded computer systems are usually controlled by the special purpose interfaces in which a straightforward menu is given to operating the machine, for example the auto teller machine. References Daniel, M. Phillip, M., and Thomas, M. (1995). Human Computer Interaction. Retrieved from: http://members.tripod.com/the_packrat/ui_desgn.html Norman, K. L. (1991). The Psychology of Menu Selection: Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface. Ablex Publishing Corporation. Senn, J. A. (2009). Analysis and Design of Information Systems. Tata McGraw Hill Education, pp 449 - 490 Read More