Shengdong Zhao, Ravin Balakrishnan
We present a variant of hierarchical marking menus where items are selected using a series of inflection-free simple marks (multi-stroke marking menu), rather than the single “zig-zag” compound mark used in the traditional design. Theoretical analysis indicates that this multi-stroke approach has the potential to significantly increase the number of items in a marking menu that can be selected efficiently and accurately. A user experiment is presented that compares the simple and compound mark techniques. Results show that the simple mark (multi-stroke) technique allows for significantly more accurate and faster menu selections overall, but most importantly also in menus with a large number of items where performance of the compound mark technique is particularly poor. The simple mark (multi-stroke) technique also requires significantly less physical input space to perform the selections, making it particularly suitable for small footprint pen-based input devices. Visual design alternatives are also discussed.
Paper: Simple vs. compound mark hierarchical marking menus.
The performance benefit of Compound-stroke Marking Menu can be seen in the following video; however, multi-stroke marking menu allows for significantly more accurate and faster menu selections overall, but most importantly also in menus with a large number of items where performance of the compound mark technique is particularly poor.