Analysis of menu selection behavior using information scent model

This study applies information scent model to the domain of menu-based interfaces and demonstrates its ability to predict user behavior within a menu hierarchy. The information scent model addresses how people make use of perceptual cues like snippets of text in order to make their navigation decisions in choosing a particular option and gives a formula to measure the relevance of each option to a particular goal concept. The model was used to analyze the data collected in a set of experiments to study characteristics of users´ menu selection behaviors. Users have to base their navigation decisions on the lexical similarity found on menu labels with their intended use when they have not learned the structure of the menu system yet. Our analysis confirmed that the information scent distribution can give a useful indicator to predict which item in a menu such users may select.