Context and selective retreat in hierarchical menu structures

Abstract

This paper describes an experiment to compare the use of two different forms of menu dialogue to solve a relatively complex problem. The problem involves multiple queries from a videotex database accessed by a potentially deep hierarchical set of menus. The dialogue forms compared are a standard videotex menu system and an enhanced menu system. The latter provides both additional contextual information and a means of selective, rather than incremental, retreat. Although no significant time advantage was measured, the results do demonstrate a significant improvement in navigation for the enhanced menu system and show the value of using realistic problems for this type of evaluation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

G. E. FIELD

On the leave at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Imperial College, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2BT, UK, 1985-88.