1. A telephone-based menu system is being designed for a magazine subscription service system. There are seven magazines available: National Geographic, Travel and Leisure, Entrepreneur, Time, Golf, US News and World Report, and Fortune. Describe three reasonable orderings of the voice menus and justify each.

One reasonable ordering would be to order them alphabetically: Entrepreneur, Fortune, Golf, Leisure, National Geographic, Time, Travel and Leisure, and US News and World Report. Alphabetic ordering is preferable because the user is aware of it and can predict how long it will take to get to their desired magazine. Another reasonable ordering would be to order the magazines by popularity. This way, the user is more likely to hear the magazine they like first. Another reasonable ordering would be to order the listings by price. Therefore, special or lower prices are listed first to get the caller to be more likely to make a purchase.

  1. Provide three examples of an application where menu selection and form fill-in are more appropriate than a direct-manipulation strategy.

Form fill in is always more appropriate when filling in personal information such as name or social security because of the sensitivity and the lack of an analogy that mimics the input. Also, when choosing information from a small organized list, it is always easier to select that information from a menu. Furthermore, it is more appropriate when screen real-estate is small.

  1. Design a touch screen music jukebox, which allows the user to select from a menu of the five most popular songs of the week. Draw a sketch of this interface for each of the following menu types: Binary Menu, Multiple-Item menu, Check boxes, Pull-down Menus. Argue which design serves the user best.

(See attached)

  1. You are in charge of designing a menu tree for navigating 1,250 books in a digital library. Present an argument of whether the menu should have larger depth (number of levels) or breadth (number of items per level).

The tree should have larger breadth so that the list is broken up as much as possible. For example, the books should be split up by genre in the first level, then another sub category in the second to make it much easier to sort through the lowest level.

  1. Frequent menu users can become annoyed if they must make several menu selections to complete a simple task. Suggest two ways you can refine the menu approach to accommodate expert or frequent users.

One way to refine the menu approach is to provide hotkeys for frequently accessed menu items. Another way would be to allow advanced users to customize a quick access bar to allow them to quickly access a more frequently used item.

  1. When users are navigating through a menu structure, they may become disoriented. The authors suggest techniques to help alleviate this disorientation such as indicating the current position in the menu. Draw a sketch of how you can show users their position for an on-line car showroom, assuming the user has browsed with the following path:

Main Menu -> Mid-size Cars -> Honda -> Accord

(See attached)

  1. What are some design considerations for fluid navigation of small-screen displays, e.g. Smartphone or even smart watch screens?

There is less screen space to show the amount you have navigated so it is better to give the user a gestural navigation approach to let them swipe in and out of levels.

  1. Critique the design of the dialog box below in the text. This dialog box is used to alert clinicians who try to prescribe the drug Warfarin, because it increases the risk of bleeding in patients already on Aspirin.

One problem I have with the buttons is that the buttons do not easily describe what they do. I think the buttons should say “Keep Only Asprin” or “Keep Only Warfarin” to make it as obvious as possible what you are doing.