Identifying Users' Conceptual Organization of Menu Functions in an Automotive Electronic Navigation Product

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to identify users' conceptual organization of functions in an electronic menu in an automotive navigation product. One group of participants consisted of engineers with experience designing electronic automotive products and another group consisted of participants with a nontechnical background more typical of average drivers. Participants judged the degree of similarity among 31 written descriptions of functions that appeared in the product's electronic menu. Similarity data were submitted to a cluster analysis which revealed nine clusters for each group. With minor differences, cluster content was similar between the two groups indicating a shared conceptual organization. The cluster structure suggested important changes to the current menu to make it more consistent with users' conceptual organization of menu functions.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Card

S. K.

(1982). User perceptual mechanisms in the search of computer command menus. Proceedings of CHI '82, Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 190–196). New York: Association for Computing Machinery.

Hollands

J. G.

Merikle

P. M.

(1987). Menu organization and user expertise in information search tasks. Human Factors, 29, 577–586.

Lewis

(1991). Cluster analysis as a technique to guide interface design. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 35, 251–265.

McDonald

J. E.

Schvaneveldt

R. W.

(1988). The application of user knowledge to interface design. In Cognitive Science and its Applications for Human-Computer Interaction. Guindo

Raymonde

Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

McDonald

J. E.

Stone

J. D.

Liebelt

L. S.

(1983). Searching for items in menus: the effects of organization and type of target. Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors Society (pp. 834–837). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.

McDonald

J. E.

Dayton

McDonald

D. R.

(1988). Adapting menu layout to tasks. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 28, 417–435.

Hofstrand

R. J. Roske

Paap

K. R.

(1986). Cognitive networks as a guide to menu organization: An application in the automated cockpit. Ergonomics, 29, 1301–1311.

Schwartz

A. L.

Schwab

E. C.

(1993). Improving menu design for the rapid order audiotext system using cluster analysis. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 37th Annual Meeting (pp. 230–234). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.

Seidler

K. S.

Wickens

C. D.

(1992). Distance and organization in multifunction displays. Human Factors, 34, 555–569.

10.

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. (1997). Chicago, IL: SPSS Inc.

11.

Tullis

T. S.

(1985). Designing a menu-based interface to an operating system. Proceedings of CHI '85, Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 79–84). New York: Association for Computing Machinery.