The Image of the Interface: How People Use Landmarks to Develop Spatial Memory of Commands in Graphical Interfaces

Graphical User Interfaces present commands at particular locations, arranged in menus, toolbars, and ribbons. One hallmark of expertise with a GUI is that experts know the locations of commonly-used commands, such that they can find them quickly and without searching. Although GUIs have been studied for many years, however, there is still little known about how this spatial location memory develops, or how designers can make interfaces more memorable. One of the main ways that people remember locations in the real world is landmarks – so we carried out a study to investigate how users remember commands and navigate in four common applications (Word, Facebook, Reader, and Photoshop). Our study revealed that people strongly rely on landmarks that are readily available in the interface (e.g., layout, corners, and edges) to orient themselves and remember commands. We provide new evidence that landmarks can aid spatial memory and expertise development with an interface, and guidelines for designers to improve the memorability of future GUIs.