Design issues related to pie menus for 5-way joysticks

Abstract

Although linear textual menus are a widely adopted solution in the mobile phone user interfaces, alternatives that would take smaller amount of screen real estate exist, e.g. toolbars and pie menus. Pie menus also provide access to functions with fewer key presses than traditional Options menu but are best suited for expert users. We compared toolbars and pie menus as a way to access most often used functions of a mobile media player. Based on user test results, we selected pie menus for implementation into a prototype and made another user test to see what kind of design considerations are related to pie menus for digital joysticks. The user feedback was positive and six design issues were identified.

Unified media functions for mobile multimedia devices

“…In comparison between the toolbar UI and the pie menu UI all participants in both test locations preferred the pie menu UI to be the one for accessing unified media functions [9].…”

“…We compared these two alternatives as a way to access most often used functions of a mobile media player. Based on user test results, we selected the pie menu UI for implementation into a demo and made another user test to see what kind of design considerations there were related to pie menu UIs [9].…”

“…In each design round we used the findings from the previous round to update the unified media functions concept. While researching the different media functions also the UI research and design was done, and it evolved from a toolbar UI based functions menu to a pie menu UI supporting unified media functions for different media types [9]. One research aspect of the unified media functions concept was how to promote the most often used functions to user out from the traditional Options menu available in S60 smart phones.…”

“…The first version of the unified media functions set consisted from "Share", "Recommend", "Mark as favorite/for later use", "Look for similar" and "Rate" to be used together with the floating toolbar UI concept [9].…”

“…Also, both concepts provided a way to access options or subfunctions of the selected main function, for example, when selecting "Share" a pop-up menu containing different sharing options was shown to user. As mentioned earlier, more design details and evaluations results about the competing UI concepts can be found from [9].…”