Abstract-This study examines how students enrolled in two

This research focuses on the self-reported use of owner's manuals for automotive vehicles. The results indicate that owner's manuals are frequently not read. Nevertheless, people prefer owner's manuals to electronic presentations of the same product information. Implications for facilitating reader use of product documentation are discussed.

Design paradigms often ignore the diverse goals users bring to the computer interface. Any human-computer interaction can be viewed as a marriage of two systems: The user begins the interaction by formulating an information goal, and the computer software meets that goal with a sometimes complex list of potential topic areas. The user then accesses that topic list through the computer interface. Part of the act of accessing the topic list is selecting a potential topic, and this action is often supported by a menu interface. Although research is pervasive on how best to organize menu items to facilitate learning, search speed, and reduced selection errors, little has been done to examine the impact of different types of user goals or cues on a menu's effectiveness. In a study using three distinct cues-direct match, synonym, and iconic -and two menu organizations -alphabetical and func-

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