Drop Down Menus – Usability

Vishal Vaidya — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:35:18 +0000

Using drop down menus is cumbersome for users, as it needs scrolling efforts by end-users, leading to usability and accessibility issues. Now, there is a new trend in the web design – of using large drop down menus. New mega drop downs are far better than regular drop downs, which hides several options when they open and may be a long scroll is involved to see all of them and still they all can’t be seen at the same time – involving usability issues like motoring and short-term memory.

These new kind of drop down menus has features like:

Everything visible at the same time, so users don’t have to scroll (in most cases).
Split into two or more panels for an easy to understand navigation interface and grouped sensibly.
Has features like usage of typography, icons (even may be thumbnails), assistive features like tool tips.
Users don’t have to remember a lot, everything being visible upfront (as the short-term memory is involved while browsing such objects and several users may miss it as they rely on short term memory).

These kinds of menus are easy-to-use and have been rated good on usability as per tests done by the Jakob Nielsen’s (Alertbox, March 23, 2009).

Also, in desktop application interfaces (GUIs) like Microsoft© Office 2007 , this kind of drop down menus with illustrations has been used effectively.

Microsoft Office Word 2007 – Formatting

Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 – Publish Slides

Below given are some of the examples:

Microsoft US homepage

BP homepage

CompareIndia.com homepage

You can read more about the Mega Drop Down menus on Jakob Nielsen’s website: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html

Usability, Information Architecture, Mobile Apps, UX, Interaction Design : Usability Factors » desktop application GUIs

Drop Down Menus – Usability