A Study on the Visual Menu Design Using Pinch Gestures on Touchscreens

The visual menu design is one of the essential issues in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Gestural operations on touchscreens will play an essential role in the future HCI. Pinch gesture is the most common one, and its two operations: zooming and rotation, are usually performed on touchscreens device. At present, previous studies have not specifically investigated the interaction between visual menu design and the modes of gestural operations. This study aimed to determine how various visual menu designs affect users' performances (task completion time and accuracy) and subjective ratings (comfortability and preference) in using pinch zooming and rotation. The results showed that visual menu designs did not significantly affect performance time and accuracy. However, the design significantly affected participants' perceived comfort and preferences, presumably attributable to compatibility between the mental models formed based on the menu design and the explicit feedback from the modes of operations. The study revealed that despite no significant effect of different visual menu designs on user performance and gestures, users might have preferred one alternative over another and compatibility between menu designs and operational mode must be taken into consideration for gestural operations on touchscreens.