Design of a Menu for Small Displays Presenting a Single Item at a Time

Abstract

Electronic consumer products such as desktop laser printers, facsimiles, copiers, etc., which have a small visual display panel are ubiquitous. They are characterized by presenting only a single menu item at a time which is usually organized in a hierarchical tree structure. Since users see only a single line information on the display and use them infrequently, the optimal menu design may be different from that of an ordinary computer display. An experiment was conducted to examine variables for designing the optimal menu on a single line display. Prototypes were developed to simulate the user interfaces of several menu structures. The results showed that the search time on the small display was approximately three times longer than that on the ordinary computer display. User experience affected significantly the search performance and a menu structure with depth 2 was found to be the optimal for infrequent users. Based on the results of the experiment, human factors guidelines for designing a menu on a single line display were suggested.