The Grid Menu: Efficient and Robust Selection of Menu-Items

With the increasing use of e-business web sites, users are often asked to select a menu-item from a large numbers of options. In this research, the pull-down menu, fisheye menu and grid menu were tested to compare the performance time, error rate, user satisfaction, simplicity, user friendliness, usefulness, and overall user preference of each menu type. The grid menu was more efficient in selection speed than the pull-down and fisheye menus when the number of menu-items was 50 and 100. The time needed to choose a menu-item with a grid menu was less affected by the size of menu and the physical location of an item within a menu. The pull-down and the grid menus were considered to be more satisfactory, simple, user friendly, and useful than the fisheye menu. 42.3 percent of subjects indicated that the grid menu was their preferred selection tool among the menus. The grid menu is an efficient and robust alternative menu choice for small and middle size menu lists.