Looking my way through the menu: the impact of menu design and multimodal input on gaze-based menu selection

In this paper a study is reported, which investigates the effectiveness of two approaches to improving gaze-based interaction for realistic and complex menu selection tasks. The first approach focuses on identifying menu designs for hierarchical menus that are particularly suitable for gaze-based interaction, whereas the second approach is based on the idea of combining gaze-based interaction with speech as a second input modality. In an experiment with 40 participants the impact of menu design, input device, and navigation complexity on accuracy and completion time in a menu selection task as well as on user satisfaction were investigated. The results concerning both objective task performance and subjective ratings confirmed our expectations in that a semi-circle menu was better suited for gaze-based menu selection than either a linear or a full-circle menu. Contrary to our expectations, an input device solely based on eye gazes turned out to be superior to the combined gaze- and speech-based device. Moreover, the drawbacks of a less suitable menu design (i.e., of a linear menu or a full-circle menu) as well as of the multimodal input device particularly obstructed performance in the case of more complex navigational tasks.

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