Cognition: Human–Computer Communication - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 207

Fig. 7.5 The original menu for selecting a VPN client at Penn State, and a revised version
created by Ritter for his own use. The version on the left encourages scanning; the version on the
right is more easily read. Simon Robbie notes (personal communication) that hierarchical menus
could be particularly useful here. (Screenshot taken June 2009)
7.3.5 Implications for System Design
When you design menus, you need to understand how vision works and how users
scan menus, so that you can use this knowledge to help guide their vision to find the
items they are looking for. When you create a menu, include items that are nec-
essary, and be wary about creating menus that are too long. Submenus should be
structured around how the user represents the world (their mental model) or how
experts represent the world. You can find out how their world is structured by asking
them or using a card sorting method (noted in Exercise 7.2). Menus structured in
these ways are more likely to be useful than those which reflect the company's
organization, for example. Long menus will be skimmed, but short menus with
submenus will require the user to take more actions to find the same item. The final
choice in these design cases requires understanding the social context and more
detailed knowledge about how often the tasks are performed. You can favor more
common tasks using a variety of designs including split menus (Sears and
Shneiderman 1994 ).
When choosing menu items and button labels, or writing text to be displayed on
a screen, it is important to consider the factors that influence readability and,
hence, usability. These factors range from choices related to fonts (typeface, size,
and so on) through to words (which words and how they should be laid out) and
the context in which they will appear. There are inherent trade-offs between these
different factors, and the results from research will tell you which is faster. They
will not tell you, however, if the changes are worth the accompanying differences
in estheticsor in the information, style, and tone.