Hi Nick
> I understand keeping it simple that's why I would
> chop the secondary menu. Memorization (actually
> muscle memory) is not required, but will happen
> anyway with continual use. Why not take advantage of it?
Well, the difficulty is that a radial menu is not guaranteed to be 100% better - you just don't normally read text arranged in a radial pattern as often as you see text in a more rectangular block pattern.
So having just a rectangular toolbox that pops up and has text on some more regular left-to-right rows is likely to be more readable and more instantly browsable.
Text arranged in an unusual and not frequently seen pattern can just tend to make people have to stop for split second and more consciously target each individual piece with their eyes. This effect is not so good, it's kind of one of those little split second irritations that can transform a workflow from feeling seamless and fluid into feeling kind of choppy and slightly interrupted all the time.
That's the reason why I generally tend to worry about how text is placed in a UI design, and it's why I avoided things like tabs that have a vertical alignment with text rotated 90 degrees from normal, that has the same kind of "instant readability" being harmed issue.
So that's kind of a difficult choice to make with a design like you're talking about - you've got to be aware of some of the negatives of that design in addition to the positives.
Again, I don't doubt that can be very efficient once someone has spent enough time to memorize the pattern so that they don't need to actually read the buttons, but there is a price to be paid with lower instant readability until someone gets to that point.
- Michael
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