Friday, January 4, 2008

Tips for effective menu design: Part I

Primitive a mechanism as they may be, menus remain the most effective way to elicit information from users. The system offers a list of options, the user picks what they want, and the system moves on to the next step. Nothing could be more straightforward. And yet, one can easily design a difficult to use menu unless some basic principles are observed.

In the next few posts, I list 16 guidelines that should help you design usable menus.

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1. Present the most requested items first

Not all menu items are created equal. If you know which items are requested most frequently, place those items at the head of the menu list.

2. Keep the menu list to 4 items or less

Because of the invisible nature of VUIs, try to keep your menus to four items or less. In case you need to present the user with more than four items, split the list into two, with the first list presenting the user with the items they are most likely to request, and access to the second list offered as the last option.

3 Keep the menu depth to 3 or less

People hate deep menus. They are exasperated by them. And the deeper the menu, the stronger the feeling that they are being led into a blind alley, with little hope to get to where they want to go. If you can’t keep your men depth to 3 or less, go back to the drawing board and see if you can’t consolidate some of those tree branches.

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