Menu Selection as an Important Part in Human Computer Interaction - Research Paper Example

MENU SELECTION Menu Selection Affiliation Introduction Menu selection is an important part in HCI (Human Computer Interaction), which enable the users to handle different types of users on different screens with different layouts. “Menu selection is a dialogue design, which presents a list of alternative or option to the user” (Dittman, 2014). With menu selection, users do not need to memorize the whole text, rather some icons are used by user for easy interaction with the application or with any system (Norman, 1991). There are some strategies, where the menu selections are built by keeping the user psychology in mind. This paper discusses some of the important ways to interact with App. User dialogue strategies used by menu driven interface User Interface It is the part of an interactive computer system, which communicates with the users for solving different queries (Jacob, 2000; Dix, Finlay, Abowd, & Beale, 1998). Strategies There are several interface strategies, which assist users in order to interact with any type of application. These strategies are given below (Tripod, 1999; Lauesen, 2010): Full screen Menus Bar and pull down menus Pop-up menus Dialogue box Cascading menus Icon menus Additionally, there are many other types of menus, which have their own advantages and disadvantages, for instance, the pop up menu saves space on the screen as they are not existed physically on the screen. In this way, it provides an advantage to the users that they need to know only the selected area options. Menu-driven interfaces continue to be popular in the modern computing age Menu-driven interfaces have been becoming more popular due to a number of advantages they provide. Each strategy has its own advantages, however, all advantages of menus are related to the user interaction. In order to attract the user, menu-driven interfaces play their role, as they allow the user to select any option easily. If the user has not selected a right option, then it provides the facility to go back to the previous state. Menu-driven interfaces enhance the usability of the system. Each section has its own color, which helps the user to differentiate between different screens (BBC, 2014). A good user interface, along with the menus, enhance the usability, simplicity, attraction and other factors that become effective due to the presence of nice menu-driven right according to the user requirements as well as the user interests (Digital Zoo, 2014). Menu-driven interfaces basically follow some fundamental principles of a good interface, which are right according to the users’ demands and requirements regarding any type of menu strategy design. These principles are: the structure principles, visibility principles, feedback principles, tolerance principles, and reuse principle (Ward, 2013). Menu-driven interface hides the complexity in the background, and users can check only those options, which they want to check. And the most important thing is the aesthetic sense of these menus, as they are pleasing to eyes. As the number of websites and applications are resulting in an increasing number of users, where there are several kinds of users, like novice user and expert user. The Menu-driven interfaces provide easiness in handling the novice user, where they can easily use the website and any application. Thus, for attracting a large number of users, either they are novice or expert, menu-driven is of high significance in this modern computing age (Ward, 2013; Digital Zoo, 2014). Strategies for making menu-driven interfaces Drop Down menu-driven interfaces Drop down menus are the menus, which are given on the screen horizontally and when the user clicks on it, or hovers in, it shows more options related to the selected option that the user can see in a vertical block. The most famous and easy to use drop down menus’ example is a menu bar. The picture of a drop down menu is given below (Wikidot, 2013): Figure 1Drop down Menu, Image Source: (Wikidot, 2013) A designer or web developer can use drop down menus, when there are a large number of options available. As if all options are shown on a single screen without any breakdown, it can cause the frustration among users. So, in order to avoid the user’s frustration and to hide the complexities, the drop down menus are effective for a good interface (Labrow, 2012). The most useful advantage of the drop down menu is that all the content on the screen is displayed in an organized manner. And also the user experience with the website is more enhanced, which is most important to compete (John, 2012). Pop up menu-driven interfaces A pop up menu does not show any visual display until the user clicks on the right option using the mouse or a touchpad. This menu is also known as context menu because it shows only those options in a specific area which the user has selected. The figure for the popup menu is given below (Computer Hope, 2014): Figure 2 Pop Up Menus Source: http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/popupmen.htm The main advantage of a pop up menu is that it shows only the limited options. And also it saves the screen space, where the designer can show another thing that is more important than this menu. Pop-up menus are directly related to an object on the screen (Computer Hope, 2014). Iconic Menus Other menu, which are discussed in this paper does not have any graphic view, for instance, the iconic menus. In iconic menus, all the menus are displayed with the icon. Like on the website, there is a home page, where there is a choice for the designer either to use the icons for the home or just write home in fashionable style. The figure of the iconic menu is given below, which demonstrate the concept of iconic menus broadly (RONALEA, 2012): Figure 3 Iconic Menu source: http://www.trendleaks.com/2012/06/free-navigation-menu-psds/ The advantage of the iconic menu is that sometimes using any application or website, the user is unable to understand the text easily, then these icons with graphical representation help the user in understanding the designer’s point. Iconic menus enhance the usability of the systems. These icons are designed for an easy and quick way of enabling the user to understand, exactly what the designer wants to show and where he wants to navigate the user. These icons are recognized universally, where there is no need to translate it for specific users (BEDFORD, 2014; Norman, 1991). Alternatives for menu-driven interface design Menu-driven interfaces are extremely effective for attracting users, but sometimes the designer or developer is unable to use the drop down menus or any other strategy, which developers apply. As an alternative to that, they use a long list of text for the navigation from the top of the page to the bottom. Or they also use a script that shows a prompt box regarding what users want to search. For example, if there is a website which have the information about any city, then instead of drop down menus or indexing, a button is created, whereby clicking on it, a prompt box opens up and says, like “please enter the city name”. Then the box will search that specific city. Or in other cases, it may use an image slider, which flows from left to right or from right to left, and each image is linked to different options or services available on the application or the website (Alvarez, 2014). There are several advantages of image slider, such as they save space on the screen, where instead of showing a large number of menus on the whole image, a small image can tell the whole story what kind of services are available on the site and how to use them. If these images are designed perfectly, then it catches the visitor attraction. Instead of showing separate images on a long list, there is a single place for all images, which are moving from side to side, enhancing the focus of users. Such image slider functionalities are quite user friendly (Ewer, 2013). Another option as an alternative to the dropdown is the form design, which can be built by using bootstrap html5 and other design language like CSS3 (Wroblewski, 2014). Conclusion Basically, a menu is believed to be a significant aspect of a user interface because it allows the users to interact with the system in an appropriate manner. A number of menu selection strategies are discussed in this paper like drop down menus, context menus and other strategies. Each strategy has its own options, features, advantages and disadvantages, and some alternative solutions available to these are also discussed in the paper. References Alvarez, H. (2014, June 17). The Navigation Treasure Trove: 37 Menu Usability Resources. Retrieved from User Testing: http://www.usertesting.com/blog/2014/06/17/the-navigation-treasure-trove-37-menu-usability-resources/ BBC. (2014). Graphical User Interfaces. Retrieved from BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/ict/software/5userinterfacesrev3.shtml BEDFORD, A. (2014, July 27). Icon Usability. Retrieved from Nngroup: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/icon-usability/ Computer Hope. (2014). Pop-up menu. Retrieved from Computer Hope: http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/popupmen.htm Digital Zoo. (2014). The Importance Of Great User Interface Design. 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