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of Maryland. A sequential menu allowed users to select a county, followed by a
business category, and then a year (Figure 12.4). Simultaneous menus allowed
for selection in any one of these criteria at any time, with detail displays
showing data based on values for the three attributes selected (Figure 12.5).
Each task in each menu structure began with the selection of a “start” link, and
ended with the selection of a link that led to the correct answer.
Pages were presented on web pages, loaded onto a single machine, and
accessed directly from that machine to minimize network delays. All menu
selections were implemented as standard web links and captured in a standard
log files. Logs were analyzed to extract the difference in time between the
event signifying the start of the task and the corresponding event indicating task
completion, using timestamps from log file entries.
This study found that sequential menus fared well for simple tasks, but
simultaneous menus were preferable for more complex tasks (Hochheiser and
Shneiderman, 2000).

FIGURE 12.5
Simultaneous menus: once a user has selected a value for each of the three variables,
details are shown on the right.
From Hochheiser, H., Shneiderman, B., 2000. Performance benefits of simultaneous over sequential menus
as task complexity increases. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 12 (2), 173–192.