An Ergonomics Study of Menu-Operation on Mobile Phone Interface

The studies on user and mobile phone interaction have been an important problem in small screen interface design. The present study was intend to investigate the impact of three common mobile phone menu displays: matrix, tree, and page-to-page - and differential organizations of their sub-menus and functions by reaction time experiment. We also used rating scale to investigate users´ preference of different mobile phone menu displays. Reaction time for accurately completing these operations was fastest when participants were presented with the matrix menu and fastest when participants were presented organizations emphasizing logical categorization rather than non-logical categorization. The result also showed consistency between users´ operating efficiency and mobile phone users´ interface preference. Finally, the implications of these findings for mobile phone design are discussed.