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Home > Guidelines > 6. Make meaningful menus. > 6b. Write each menu so it offers a meaningful structure. |
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6b. Write each menu so it offers a meaningful structure.
Menus, like tables of contents, and even indexes, can offer a meaningful structure of objects—a value beyond simply offering choices. Make your writing reveal that meaning. Search results and see-also lists do not provide a meaningful structure, because they are assembled "out of order." In outlining your material, you have already organized your material in an order that adds meaning, and value, to the individual sections whose headings appear at the same level in a menu. Write individual items so that:
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Other ways to make your menus meaningful: 6a. Think of a heading as an object you reuse many times. 6c. Offer multiple routes to the same information. 6d. Write and display several levels at once. 6e. When users arrive at the target, make it obvious. 6f. Confirm the location by showing its position in the hierarchy. Resources on menus |
Diagram
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BackgroundThe Scottish philosopher
Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856) wrote: "If
you throw a handful of marbles on the
floor, you will find it difficult to view
at once more than six, or seven at most,
without confusion." This was confirmed by
the English economist William Stanley
Jevons (1835-82) by throwing beans into a
box and estimating their number. He found
that he never made a mistake with three or
four, was sometimes wrong when there were
five, was right about half the time with
ten beans, and was usually wrong with
fifteen. These experiments are cited by the
American psychologist George Miller, the
author of the famous paper, "The Magic
Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" (1956).
Miller found that more items can be
remembered when they are coded, or
"chunked." Another reason to group operations is to break up a menu so it’s easier to read. —Apple (1987) Use meaningful groupings of menu choices. …Use meaningful ordering of menu choices. —Hix & Hartson (1993) Don’t let menus just run on with a dozen submenu items without offering the eye and the brain some grouping clues. —Minasi (1994) Menus can also help aid long-term memory retrieval. Menu interfaces should be designed to present items in logical groupings rather than simply in alphabetical or random order. —Mandel (1994) Long menu lists can usually be grouped into smaller logical groups to chunk items for users to remember more easily. Menu interfaces should be designed to present items in logical groupings rather than simply in alphabetical or random order. The screen layout and organization of menus allow users to assign meanings to the groupings and make both the menus and the individual choices more memorable. —Mandel (1997) The Grouping choices into functional units will reduce mental effort and help people quickly interpret your whole page. For example, with the appropriate layout, people will quickly interpret a list of 12 adjectives (such as comedy, drama, Western, and so on) as a single set of movie genres. —Keeker (1997) It must be possible somehow to read the structure to find good paths; the structure must be view navigable. —Furnas (1997) Help viewers understand the nature of the relationships you use, e.g., use hierarchies or heterarchies of information that embody clear, logical structures. Because viewers become easily bored, disinterested, or irritated with lists of unordered items or links, and have difficulty finding specific information in random lists, create useful organizational structures to support scanning and locating information. —Ameritech (1998) Humans are driven to seek out structure and pattern. By implication, readers will learn the "flow" of your site—but only if you let them. —Sullivan (1998) Situational awareness ..[is the] continuous extraction of environmental information, integration of this information with previous knowledge to form a coherent mental picture, and the use of that picture in directing further perception and anticipating future events. —Whitaker (1998) Make sure the structure itself stays clear wherever you are within the pyramid or tree. —Abeleto (1999) To be useful to an Internet audience, each site must deliver entertainment or knowledge, or improve the way its audience accomplishes some important task (such as purchase ticks or get fit). … Tell potential audience members how your site is relevant to them. Identify related topics or tasks that are important to your target market. —Microsoft (2000) "Non-linear" media require strong structures and content narratives. —Lynch (2000) Group information to help readers create hierarchical frameworks for storing incoming information in long-term memory. … We know that readers organize information in long-term memory in a hierarchical fashion (McKoon 1977). Chunking or grouping information items facilitates the reader in building these LTM frameworks and decreases attentional demands because readers can perceive the text structure more easily.—Spyridakis (2000) Design the interface to readily reveal the underlying information structure. … That is, the interface should suggest the Web site’s underlying information structure. The information structure, in turn, helps users better understand the relationships among the ideas that appear on the various pages of the Web site.—Farkas and Farkas (2000) See bibliography: Abeleto (1999), Ameritech (1998), Apple (1987), Cooper (1995, 1999), Farkas and Farkas (2000), Furnas (1997), Golledge (1999a), Gregory (1987), Hix & Hartson (1993), Keeker (1997), Krug (2000), Larson & Czerwinski (1998), Lynch (1960), Lynch (2000), MacEachren (1992), Mandel (1994, 1997), McKoon (1977), Microsoft (2000), Miller (1956), Minasi (1994), Norman (1991), Price (1999), Spyridakis (2000), Sullivan (1998), Thinus-Blanc and Gaunet (1999), Whitaker (1998) Original Menu Air Conditioning Background Air conditioning department stores Carrier patents an air conditioner Chilling out a World’s Fair Cooling the stock exchange Gorrie’s refrigeration machines Gorrie’s utopia Movie theater air conditioned Preserving corpses Revised Menu The Early Days of Air Conditioning The Vision Gorrie’s utopia, 1842 Gorrie’s refrigeration machines, 1851 Working Prototypes Preserving corpses, 1899 Cooling the stock exchange, 1904 Chilling out a World’s Fair, 1904 The Air-Conditioning Business Carrier patents an air conditioner, 1906 Movie theater air conditioned, 1917 Air conditioning department stores, 1919
Original Menu Joseph Paxton Author of books on flowers Building orchid houses Designing the Crystal Palace Editor of Horticultural Register Head Gardener at Chatsworth Investment in railroads Speculation: rail excursions Startup: a tourism company The creation of glass greenhouses Worker at the Horticultural Society Gardens Revised Menu Joseph Paxton, Designer of the Crystal Palace Gardener Working at the Horticultural Society Gardens Running the gardens at Chatsworth Editing the Horticultural Register Authoring books on flowers Railway speculator Offering rail excursions Starting a tourism company Investing in railroads Architect Building orchid houses Creating glass greenhouses Designing the Crystal Palace |
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Don't make me take an ax to your menu! |
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