An empirical investigation of memory for routes through menu structures

Menu structures are a pervasive mechanism for interacting with computers. However, whilst a number of investigators have studied the effects of different types of menu structure on initial search performance, there is little empirical work on how routes experienced through exploration, are committed to memory. This paper reports a preliminary empirical investigation of human memory for this kind of skill. Specific predictions are derived from a functional model, called AYN (Howes, 1994). The predictions of the model and the actual performance of the subjects are compared and the implications of the findings for the model are discussed.