USABILITY ANALYSIS ON MENU SEARCHING AID AND FUNCTION KEY LAYOUT DESIGN OF CELLULAR PHONES

Based on product function density analysis, this article chooses cellular phones as a research subject among all types of smart products, and investigates the effects of on-screen menu searching aids and function key layouts to the first-time users. The results show that among three types of on-screen menu searching aids, the tree structure and list structure aids are superior to the digit aid. In terms of function key layouts, symbol labeling is better than text labeling while no significant difference was found between parallel layouts and cross layouts. For first-time users, on-screen menu searching aids provide structural information for building mental model toward using a cellular phone. Thus, if the searching aids are designed compatibly, the learning efficiency for menu searching tasks can be increased.