Contents structured in Index are more readable

I have always thought that informations visualy structured in an index such as Yahoo! are more efficient than the usual drop down menu in the left column. So I’m pretty happy to give you this abstract :

Information is found more quickly in Index menus than in cascading menus. In a study by Bernard and Hamblin (2003), three menu layouts were compared for objective and subjective performance, as well as overall preference. The menus structures consisted of an index layout (like Yahoo.com), a vertical cascading layout, and a horizontal cascading layout. Significant differences in search time were revealed between the three menu item layouts that favored the index menu layout. In addition, there was a non-reliable trend that favored the subjective opinion that the index layout was less disorientating than the other two layouts. Moreover, participants selected the index layout as their first preference choice more than the other two layouts. The poorest performer, both objectively and subjectively, was the horizontal layout.

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