Guidelines for menu items
- The menu should have a short
meaningful headline, preferably centered, in upper/lower case; unneccessary
emphasis/embellishment should be avoided.
- Menus should show
- the menu items that can be
selected
- the menu items that currently
cannot be selected (deemphasized)
- the menu items that have already
been selected
- the presence of submenus
- if applicable: the code/key
to select the menu item
- if applicable: the shortcut
that can be used to select the item, in addition to the mouse
- if applicable: short and polite
instructions on how to select items, formulated in terms of the user's task.
- Entries should be in upper/lower
case; avoid unneccessary emphasis/embellishment.
- The difference of each entry
to all other entries must be very clear (Schwartz & Norman, 1986).
- If the name of an item consists
of more than one word, the most significant word should come first.
- If letter codes are being used,
the code should correspond to the first letter of the first word. If this
is not possible, numeric codes should be used (Pellman, 1984)
.
- To achieve external consistency
with earlier versions or competitive products, menu items should be lexically
identical (least there won't be a transfer effect; Foltz et al., 1988). Addition
and ommission of menu entries is o.k.
- In non-tabular menus, the error
rate for items with text and icons combined is 50% less than for mere textual
items (Muter and Mayson, 1986).
Example of poor menu design
Example of better menu design