| This research focuses on a computer human interaction technique well suited toward ever-increasing display areas found on larger monitors, multiple monitors, and large interactive displays such as whiteboards. Specifically, a new type of interface control is explored; one that helps move the user interface from the edges of the screen to the location where the user is currently working. Existing techniques of moving the user interface to the user, such as gesturing or radial (pie) menus, allow the user to choose an item, but suffer from the inability to choose the value of an item. The introduction of continuous controls for radial menus allows for the selection of an item, such as with pie menus, but in addition allows for the selection of a value for that item. An example of this might be an audio menu where the items are volume, bass, treble, and balance, and the item and its associated value can be chosen in one action.;This research evaluates continuous radial menus through an empirical experiment. The results for the experiment show that (1) a visual mark to act as an indicator of the value about to be selected is not necessary, but may be desirable; (2) the direction of increasing value (top-to-bottom versus clockwise) does not effect performance, but perhaps clockwise is preferable; (3) the menu should have an outside radius of at least 100 pixels or approximately 2.5 cm, but an unbounded menu is best; (4) a menu can support up to eight continuous control items without seriously degrading performance; and (5) the proposed menu is easy to learn. |
