Effects of Help Fields on Navigating Through Hierarchical Menu Structures

Abstract The results of two experiments on simple menu selection are reported in which participants searched for target words through hierarchical menu displays consisting of binary choices at six levels. The menu hierarchy contained 64 words at the lowest level. Category descriptor terms were provided at higher levels and participants were required to select a sequence of options which would lead to the target word. In addition to the standard menu options, participants in experimental groups were shown help fields containing either previous selections, the target word, or upcoming selections. Participants who selected options in the presence of options at the next lower level in the menu (upcoming selections) searched with greater accuracy than participants in the control condition (no additional information), but neither continuous display of the target nor providing a list of previous selections within a trial benefited search performance. This pattern of results was found both when participants had no previous experience on the task and when help fields were introduced after 64 trials on the standard menu. Similar trends were found when help fields were introduced after 128 trials on the standard menu, but between-group differences failed to reach significance in that condition. The results of these experiments suggest that when required to use menus with multiple levels in simple menu selection, the options at a given level should include information about options at deeper levels in the menu.