Effects of Frequency Distribution on Linear Menu Performance

Wanyu Liu, Gilles Bailly, Andrew Howes

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

While it is well known that menu usage follows a Zipfian distribution, there has been little interest in the impact of menu item frequency distribution on user’s behavior. In this note, we explore the effects of frequency distribution on average menu performance as well as individual item performance. We compare three frequency distributions of menu item usage: Uniform; Zipfian with s=1 and Zipfian with s=2. The results show that (1) user’s behavior is sensitive to different frequency distributions at both menu and item level; (2) individual item
selection time depends on, not only its frequency, but also the frequency of other items in the menu. Finally, we discuss how these findings might have impacts on menu design, empirical studies and menu modelling.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHi '17 - Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages1307-1312
ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-4655-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 May 2017
EventThe 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17) - Denver, Colorado, United States
Duration: 6 May 201711 May 2017

Conference

ConferenceThe 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17)
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDenver, Colorado
Period6/05/1711/05/17

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