HIERARCHICAL MENU DESIGN - BREADTH, DEPTH, AND TASK COMPLEXITY

In this research a relationship between an hierarchical menu's depth a nd the perceived complexity of a task involving menu retrieval was pro posed and validated. 12 subjects were asked to use six different hiera rchical menus of varying breadth and depth. The dependent variables we re response time and accuracy. The independent variables were depth an d breadth of the hierarchy. Subsequent to experimentation, the subject s were asked to complete a questionnaire on users' perceptions of the complexity of the different menu structures. As depth increased, perce ived complexity of the menus increased significantly. These phenomena are linked to an existing theory of task complexity. We suggest that t he cognitive component influencing users' perceptions of task complexi ty was short-term memory load.