Cloud Menus, a Circular Adaptive Menu for Small Screens

This paper presents Cloud Menus, a split adaptive menu for small screens where the predicted menu items are arranged in a tag cloud with a location consistent with their corre-sponding position in the static menu and a font size depending on their prediction level. This layout results from a 3-step design process: (i) defining an initial design space on Bertin’s 8 visual variables and 4 quality properties, (ii) iden-tifying the most preferred layout based on agreement rate, and (iii) implementing it into Cloud Menus, a new widget for Android with cloud layout. A theoretical study investigates a model for estimating the item selection time. An empirical study suggests that cloud menus reduce item selection time and error rate when prediction is correct without penalizing it when prediction is incorrect, compared to two baselines: a non-adaptive static menu and an adaptive linear menu, where predicted items are arranged in a vertical list. From these studies, design guidelines for cloud menus are developed.