.title
Label Arrangement

.synonyms
Arrangement

.definition
Design principles for the arrangment of pie menu items.

.contents

	For many applications, a well thought out label arrangement can help to
	make a pie menu intuitive, learnable, and efficient to use.  This
	effort is mainly worthwhile with menus that will always have the same
	number of items, however. (Changing the number of choices in a
	pie menu changes the direction the choices are in, and requires the
	user to look at the menu to be sure of the selection direction.) By
	choosing appropriate and convenient directions, the menu designer can
	strive to make a menu with a mnemonic layout and a good kinesthetic
	feel.
	
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.tab 0 .line INTUITIVE
	A pie menu is intuitive if there is an obvious, well known, or natural
	correspondence between the meaning of the items and their directions,
	the visual look of the labels and feedback, and the kinesthetic feel
	of mouse movement and clicks.
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.tab 0 .line LEARNABLE
	The learnability of a pie menu can be enhanced by taking advantage of
	arrangements that the user is already familiar with, such as the
	positions of the hours on a clock face. A menu with orthogonal
	submenus, such as the font menu, is simpler to learn than one without
	such organization.
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.tab 0 .line GOOD KINESTHETIC FEEL
	There are several ways to design a pie menu to have a good kinesthetic
	feel. Since these heuristics may not all be compatible with each other
	when applied to the design of a particular menu, the menu designer is
	encouraged to try out the feel of several different layouts first
	hand. Intellectualization and hand waving cannot replace prototyping
	and the actual evaluation of hands on experience.
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	Some input devices favor certain directions of movement, making them
	easier to indicate than others (Buxton, 1986). In the experiment
	comparing pie menus with linear menus (Callahan, et all, 1988), it was
	found that the top and bottom items of an eight-item pie menu
	could be chosen faster than the other six, by novices using an
	optical mouse.  Therefore, putting commonly used items in the top
	and bottom slices of a pie menu can make it more kinesthetically
	efficient.
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	Placing a commonly used submenu items in the same direction as the
	submenu is in its parent menu will enable the user to choose that item
	without changing the direction of mouse movement. Since the
	unconstrained movement command in the "Move..." submenu (figure 7) is
	the most commonly used item, it is placed to the right, in the same
	direction as the "Move..."  item in the window management pie menu
	(figure 5).
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	Some commands will require the user to move the mouse to a new point
	on the screen and click the mouse button after making a menu
	selection.  Try to place such items in directions corresponding
	to the way the user would usually want to move the cursor after making
	the selection. For example, the corner and edge items in the
	"Stretch..." submenu are placed in the directions corresponding to the
	actual corners and edges of the window (figure 6). After the selection
	is made, the user moves the cursor to a new location for the specified
	corner or edge, and clicks the button. The new location is often 
	in the same direction as the item, in which case there is less
	wasted mouse movement.
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	Another such example is that the vertical and horizontal constrained
	window movement commands in the "Move..." submenu are the top and left
	items of the menu, on the axis corresponding to types of movement they
	select (figure 7). To change a window's vertical or horizontal
	position, the user selects one of the constrained movement items, and
	points and clicks at a new vertical or horizontal position, which is
	commonly in the same direction as the selected item.

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	==> .~ Menu Size~