Effects of Menu Foresight on Information Access in Small Screen Devices

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of menu foresight (the number of menu items visible at a time on the display) on the usability of small screen devices. Cognitive factors (field dependency, locus of control and mental rotation ability) mediating the effects were assessed in order to identify the underlying processes of accessing information. Thirty-nine participants processed tasks on a simulated cellular phone where one, three or seven menu items were presented on the display. Search time, executed steps as well as ratings of the ease of use were collected. Results show that intermediate foresight (three items) led to the best performance. Highly field dependent users showed to have extreme difficulties when only one function was seen on the display whereas low spatial ability participants had most trouble with seven items displayed at a time. These findings suggest that cognitive processes of prestructuring information account for the effects of menu foresight.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Amthauer

Brocke

Liepmann

Beauducel

(1999). Intelligenz-Struktur-Test 2000 (IST 2000). [Intelligence Structure Test]. Göttingen: Hogrefe.

Bay

Ziefle

(2003a). Performance on mobile phones: Does it depend on proper cognitive mapping? In Harris

Duffy

Smith

Stephanidis

(Eds.), Human-centred computing. Cognitive, social and ergonomic aspects. Vol. 3 (pp.170–174). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bay

Ziefle

(2003b). Design for all: User characteristics to be considered for the design of phones with hierarchical menu structures. In Luczak

Zink

K. J.

(Eds.), Human factors in organizational design and management–IV (pp. 503–508). Santa Monica, CA: IEA.

Beier

(1999). Kontrollüberzeugung im Umgang mit Technik. [Locus of control in interaction with technology] Report Psychologie, 9, 684–693.

Bernard

M. L.

Chaparro

B. S.

Russell

M. C.

(2001). Examining automatic text presentation for small screens. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 45th Annual Meeting, 637–639.

Bouma

(1970). Interaction effects in parafoveal letter recognition. Nature, 226, 177–178.

Braun

(1993). Shape-from-shading is independent of visual attention and may be a texton. Spatial Vision 7 (4), 311–322.

Eriksen

B. A.

Eriksen

C. W.

(1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception and Psychophysics, 16, 143–149.

Gittler

(1990). Dreidimensionaler Würfeltest. [Threedimensional cubes test]. Weinheim: Belz.

10.

Han

S. H.

Kwahk

(1994). Design of a menu for small displays presenting a single item at a time. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 38th Annual Meeting, 360–364.

11.

Lennartz

(2004). Kinder am Handy - erleichtert eine Funktionsvorausschau die Navigation im Menü? [Children using a mobile phone - does menu foresight facilitate navigation performance?] Unpublished master's thesis, RWTH Aachen University.

12.

Nattkemper

Prinz

(1990). Local and global control of saccade amplitude and fixation duration in continuous search. In Groner

d'Ydewalle

Parham

(Eds.). Search and reading (pp. 91–101). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

13.

Norman

K. L.

(1991). The psychology of menu selection. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

14.

Snowberry

Parkinson

S. R.

Sisson

(1985). Effects of help fields on navigating through hierarchical menu structures. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 22, 479–491.

15.

Tinker

M. A.

(1963). Legibility of print. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press.

16.

Witkin

H. A.

Dyk

R. B.

Faterson

H. F.

Goodenough

D. R.

Karp

S. A.

(1962). Psychological differentiation. Studies of development. New York: John Wiley.

17.

Ziefle

Bay

(in press). Mental models of a cellular phone menu. Comparing younger and older novice users. Proceedings of Mobile HCI'04, 6th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices.

18.

Ziefle

Künzer

Bodendieck

(in press). The impact of user characteristics on the utility of adaptive help systems. Proceedings of WWCS 2004, 7th International Conference on Work With Computing Systems.