Abstract
An experiment testing the effectiveness of ordering menus in a self-terminating menu search task is described. Twelve subjects participated in the search task which consisted of traversing menus in a database of 4,096 items. Four depth vs. breadth combinations were used. Half of the subjects started on a series of randomly ordered menus while the remainder began on sequentially ordered menus. As expected, the ordering of items on the menus did improve performance. It was observed that ordering the elements grew in importance as the number of elements on the menu increased. The subjects' search strategies are discussed as well as possible applications of the data in the design of menu selection systems.
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