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There are multiple ways to build a menu within an e-commerce site. In the study performed by J. Hamblin, & Barbara S. Chaparro (2003) it was shown that the users prefered the Index menu over the corresponding horizontal and vertical menu layouts due to the fact that they could perform their tasks faster and easier on that menu. In this study different menus were tested within an e-commerce site to see whether or not this result still applies today. However, in addition, the usage of images within menus would be an addition to test to see whether or not images affect the results. However in this study, the different users are divided into three groups to differ their preference. Those with little, medium and a lot of experience with computers. The hypothesis was that the Index Image menu would be the most preferred and that images would decrease the amount of time it takes forusers to perform their tasks. The hypothesis was to be only partly right. Result shows that the horizontal menu containing images was mostly preferred by allgroups even though it was not the fastest menu among all of them to use showing that images did not necessarily lower the time it takes to perform tasks. The result also shows that the group with the least amount of computer experience also had a preference for the Image Index menu which does agree with the hypothesis, but however, this only applied to one group therefore the hypothesis can not be considered completely correct in that aspect. However, the experiment proves that there is a preference for images within these menus.

The restaurant industry is a highly customer-driven field. Therefore, it is imperative that restaurateurs consider customer expectations with regard to restaurant menus. The purpose of this experimental study is to examine the effects of menu format (i.e., paper or digital) and amount of nutritional information (i.e., extensive, brief, or none) on customer perceptions of the effectiveness, perceived ease of use, and information quality of the menu. Furthermore, this research intends to test the effect of these three menu attributes on the outcomes of value and satisfaction in order to assess the competitive advantage of one format over the other. The Cognitive Appraisal and Information Processing Theories provide structure to the proposed conceptual framework and give credence to the findings. This study also fills gaps in the present research by not only ameliorating weaknesses of extant studies, but also by examining several different aspects of restaurant menus simultaneously within a single study.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / The purpose of this document is to improve inventory management processes and food processing at a restaurant in the region of Ancash by applying the 5S methodology and using specific indicators for the location and type of work. All this was achieved with the implementation of the menu engineering methodology, which consists basically of forecasts, linear programming, long-term orders, and inventory management. The proper operation of the new processes was experimentally validated. First, the main results were that the use of approximately 4.30 m2 of the work space allocated to unnecessary activities within the work area was optimized, increasing the number of processes that a worker can perform without moving more than 1 m from their work position. Despite the many studies existing on the methodology implemented, there is scarce material that focuses on its application in restaurants, as it is normally developed in industrial areas.

Child care centers are becoming much more influential in educating and caring for children because more and more families choose supplemental care for their young children in child development programs. In June 1997, Child and Adult Food Program (CACFP) served nearly 2.2 million children and provided meals to 2.6 million children in March 1998. A large number of children eat at least one and sometimes two or more of their meals at child care centers. It is imperative that nutritious and satisfying meals and snacks are served at child care centers. The purpose of this study was to examine menus planned in Head Start Program and Child Day Care Centers in Virginia and to assess if they meet the national Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) standards for vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron. Lunch menus for 3-5 year old children were collected from 114 CACFP staffs attending a state wide CACFP menu training session. Fifty-seven weekly menus were selected based on geographic representation to analyze vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron levels by a nutritional analysis computer program. Menus were also divided into Head Start Program and Child Day Care Center for further analysis and comparison. For all 57 sites, the mean values of these lunches exceeded the one-third RDAs for vitamin A, vitamin C, and calcium; the average percentages were 198%, 121% and 134%, respectively. But the average iron level was only 63% RDAs. None of the child care centers met 100% of one-third RDAs for the lunch menus. Because dietary iron levels are consistently low, iron food sources were studied. The results showed no significant (p< 0.05) difference between the Head Start Program and Child Day Care Center. Based on the findings of this study, following the established meal pattern guidelines for the child nutrition programs did not guarantee adequate iron levels in the planned menus of the child care centers. Some foods with high iron levels should be used more often. Further research is needed for this population in implementing the appropriate dietary guideline. In addition, the menu planing, food purchasing and preparation should be part of the training programs for child care centers. / Master of Science

A diversificação nas formas de acesso à Web, alavancada pelo crescente uso de dispositivos ubíquos, principalmente smartphones e tablets, tem motivado o desenvolvimento de métodos para adaptação do conteúdo disponível na Web, dado que grande parte do conteúdo não foi projetado para ser acessado nesse novo contexto. O conteúdo Web é composto por diversos elementos que, em geral, fornecem interatividade aos usuários. Alguns destes elementos, tais como menus, são responsáveis por auxiliar a navegação no site, ajudando na localização e acesso das informações que por ventura o usuário esteja procurando. No entanto, muitos dos menus disponíveis na Web não foram desenvolvidos de uma forma acessível e nem suportam a interação em dispositivos, criando dificuldades que impedem os usuários interagirem satisfatoriamente com esses elementos. Além da diversificação de modos de acesso, existe também a diversificação do perfil de usuários que fazem uso dos recursos da Web. Alguns desses usuários encontram barreiras que tendem a dificultar ou limitar seu acesso às aplicações e conteúdos Web em geral. Nesse sentindo, este trabalho teve como objetivo principal abordar o problema de adaptação de conteúdo Web para dispositivos móveis, com foco nos menus, fornecendo uma solução personalizada de acordo com as preferências do usuário, a fim de que as barreiras de interação fossem reduzidas ou eliminadas. Inicialmente estudou-se os diferentes padrões de menus, bem como as diretrizes de acessibilidade e usabilidade para criação de menus acessíveis. A partir desses estudos, foi desenvolvido uma metamodelo que deu origem a linguagem AMenu, contendo todos os detalhes técnicos sobre a acessibilidade e usabilidade. Em seguida, foi desenvolvida a ferramenta AMeG, para validar a linguagem AMenu. Com base na avaliação da linguagem, foi desenvolvido o mecanismo de adaptação, que faz uso da linguagem AMenu para geração dos menus acessíveis e adaptados para dispositivos móveis. Finalmente, um estudo de caso com usuários idosos foi conduzido, a fim de comparar os menus gerados pelo mecanismo em relação aos menus originais. Os resultados obtidos apontam um melhor desempenho na interação com os menus gerados pelo mecanismo, uma vez que os participantes obtiveram uma redução de 54% no tempo de realização das tarefas e cometeram 82% menos erros. Por outro lado, os resultados apontam que todos os participantes responderam melhor à abordagem de adaptação desenvolvida neste estudo, uma vez que eles conseguiram concluir com sucesso todas as tarefas definidas para o estudo. / The diversity of means to use the Internet, ensured by the growing upcoming of ubiquitous devices such as tablets and smartphones, has promoted research on adaptation of the content that used to be mostly targeted only to desktop platform into this new context now known as the mobile devices. Some of the elements such as the menus are designed to facilitate the usage of the website once they help at finding and using the information that the user looks for. However, most of the menus available on websites do not apply the mobile devices, nor provide users with interaction, which nearly disables the interaction with the mentioned devices. There yet must be added the profile diversity of the web content users. Some of these users, such as elderly people, find limitations that tend to hamper their access to web content on the mobile devices, once aging commonly represents both physical (visual, hearing and motor abilities) and cognitive (attention, memory and reasoning issues) impairment that directly interferes on the usage of the computing devices that do not portray adjustments to such audience profile. This paper aims at investigating the issues related to the adaptation of web contents into the mobile devices. We focused on the menus in order to reduce or eliminate the limitations elderly people could find while using the mobile devices. We initially analyzed different patterns and structure of menus, as well as the guidelines upon accessibility and usability involved in the menus designing process. Based on this analysis, we developed a metamodel that originated the AMenu language, in which all technical data upon accessibility and usability involved in the menus designing process was included. Then, we developed the AMeG tool in order to assess the language created under the development perspective. Based on this assessment, we developed of an adaption mechanism that uses the AMenu language to generate menus adapted to the mobile devices. We then run a study case with elderly people in order to assess the menus generated by the mechanism, based on the comparison with the original ones. The results demonstrated that the participants had a better performance in the interaction while using the menus generated by the mechanism rather than the original ones, since they spent 54% less time performing tasks and made 82% less mistakes compared to the original menus. We also verified a quitting average of 33% among the participants while performing the assigned tasks using the original menus. On the other hand, the results point out that all participants responded better to the approach developed in this study as they all managed to successfully finish all the assigned tasks.

Computers are developed continuously to satisfy the human demands, and typical tools used everywhere for ranging from daily life usage to all kinds of research. Virtual Reality (VR), a virtual environment simulated to present physical presence in the real word and imaginary worlds, has been widely applied to simulate the virtual environment. People’s feeling is limited to visual perception when only computers are applied for simulations, since computers are limited to display visualization of data, while human senses include sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch and so on. Other devices can be applied, such as haptics, a device for sense of touch, to enhance the human perception in virtual environment. A good way to apply VR applications is to place them in a virtual display system, a system with multiply tools displays a virtual environment with experiencing different human senses, to enhance the people’s feeling of being immersed in a virtual environment. Such virtual display systems include VR dome, recursive acronym CAVE, VR workbench, VR workstation and so on. Menus with lots of advantages in manipulating applications are common in conventional systems, operating systems or other systems in computers. Normally a system will not be usable without them. Although VR applications are more natural and intuitive, they are much less or not usable without menus. But very few studies have focused on user interfaces in VR. This situation motivates us working further in this area. We want to create two models on different purposes. One is inspired from menus in conventional system and the sense of touch. And the other one is designed based on the spatial presence of VR. The first model is a two-dimensional pie menu in pop-up style with spring force feedback. This model is in a pie shape with eight options on the root menu. And there is a pop-up style hierarchical menu belongs to each option on the root menu. When the haptics device is near an option on the root menu, the spring force will force the haptics device towards to the center of the option and that option will be selected, and then the sub menu with nine options will pop up. The pie shape together with the spring force effect is expected to both increase the speed of selection and decrease the error rate of selection. The other model is a semiautomatic three-dimensional cube menu. This cube menu is designed with a aim to provide a simple, elegant, efficient and accurate user interface approach. This model is designed with four faces, including the front, back, left and right faces of the cube. Each face represents a category and has nine widgets. Users can make selections in different categories. An efficient way to change between categories is to rotate the cube automatically. Thus, a navigable rotation animation system is built and is manipulating the cube rotate horizontally for ninety degrees each time, so one of the faces will always face users. These two models are built under H3DAPI, an open source haptics software development platform with UI toolkit, a user interface toolkit. After the implementation, we made a pilot study, which is a formative study, to evaluate the feasibility of both menus. This pilot study includes a list of tasks for each menu, a questionnaire regards to the menu performance for each subject and a discussion with each subject. Six students participated as test subjects. In the pie menu, most of the subjects feel the spring force guides them to the target option and they can control the haptics device comfortably under such force. In the cube menu, the navigation rotation system works well and the cube rotates accurately and efficiently. The results of the pilot study show the models work as we initially expected. The recorded task completion time for each menu shows that with the same amount of tasks and similar difficulties, subjects spent more time on the cube menu than on the pie menu. This may implicate that pie menu is a faster approach comparing to the cube menu. We further consider that both the pie shape and force feedback may help reducing the selection time. The result for the option selection error rate test on the cube menu may implicates that option selection without any force feedback may also achieve a considerable good effect. Through the answers from the questionnaire for each subject, both menus are comfortable to use and in good control.

A diversificação nas formas de acesso à Web, alavancada pelo crescente uso de dispositivos ubíquos, principalmente smartphones e tablets, tem motivado o desenvolvimento de métodos para adaptação do conteúdo disponível na Web, dado que grande parte do conteúdo não foi projetado para ser acessado nesse novo contexto. O conteúdo Web é composto por diversos elementos que, em geral, fornecem interatividade aos usuários. Alguns destes elementos, tais como menus, são responsáveis por auxiliar a navegação no site, ajudando na localização e acesso das informações que por ventura o usuário esteja procurando. No entanto, muitos dos menus disponíveis na Web não foram desenvolvidos de uma forma acessível e nem suportam a interação em dispositivos, criando dificuldades que impedem os usuários interagirem satisfatoriamente com esses elementos. Além da diversificação de modos de acesso, existe também a diversificação do perfil de usuários que fazem uso dos recursos da Web. Alguns desses usuários encontram barreiras que tendem a dificultar ou limitar seu acesso às aplicações e conteúdos Web em geral. Nesse sentindo, este trabalho teve como objetivo principal abordar o problema de adaptação de conteúdo Web para dispositivos móveis, com foco nos menus, fornecendo uma solução personalizada de acordo com as preferências do usuário, a fim de que as barreiras de interação fossem reduzidas ou eliminadas. Inicialmente estudou-se os diferentes padrões de menus, bem como as diretrizes de acessibilidade e usabilidade para criação de menus acessíveis. A partir desses estudos, foi desenvolvido uma metamodelo que deu origem a linguagem AMenu, contendo todos os detalhes técnicos sobre a acessibilidade e usabilidade. Em seguida, foi desenvolvida a ferramenta AMeG, para validar a linguagem AMenu. Com base na avaliação da linguagem, foi desenvolvido o mecanismo de adaptação, que faz uso da linguagem AMenu para geração dos menus acessíveis e adaptados para dispositivos móveis. Finalmente, um estudo de caso com usuários idosos foi conduzido, a fim de comparar os menus gerados pelo mecanismo em relação aos menus originais. Os resultados obtidos apontam um melhor desempenho na interação com os menus gerados pelo mecanismo, uma vez que os participantes obtiveram uma redução de 54% no tempo de realização das tarefas e cometeram 82% menos erros. Por outro lado, os resultados apontam que todos os participantes responderam melhor à abordagem de adaptação desenvolvida neste estudo, uma vez que eles conseguiram concluir com sucesso todas as tarefas definidas para o estudo. / The diversity of means to use the Internet, ensured by the growing upcoming of ubiquitous devices such as tablets and smartphones, has promoted research on adaptation of the content that used to be mostly targeted only to desktop platform into this new context now known as the mobile devices. Some of the elements such as the menus are designed to facilitate the usage of the website once they help at finding and using the information that the user looks for. However, most of the menus available on websites do not apply the mobile devices, nor provide users with interaction, which nearly disables the interaction with the mentioned devices. There yet must be added the profile diversity of the web content users. Some of these users, such as elderly people, find limitations that tend to hamper their access to web content on the mobile devices, once aging commonly represents both physical (visual, hearing and motor abilities) and cognitive (attention, memory and reasoning issues) impairment that directly interferes on the usage of the computing devices that do not portray adjustments to such audience profile. This paper aims at investigating the issues related to the adaptation of web contents into the mobile devices. We focused on the menus in order to reduce or eliminate the limitations elderly people could find while using the mobile devices. We initially analyzed different patterns and structure of menus, as well as the guidelines upon accessibility and usability involved in the menus designing process. Based on this analysis, we developed a metamodel that originated the AMenu language, in which all technical data upon accessibility and usability involved in the menus designing process was included. Then, we developed the AMeG tool in order to assess the language created under the development perspective. Based on this assessment, we developed of an adaption mechanism that uses the AMenu language to generate menus adapted to the mobile devices. We then run a study case with elderly people in order to assess the menus generated by the mechanism, based on the comparison with the original ones. The results demonstrated that the participants had a better performance in the interaction while using the menus generated by the mechanism rather than the original ones, since they spent 54% less time performing tasks and made 82% less mistakes compared to the original menus. We also verified a quitting average of 33% among the participants while performing the assigned tasks using the original menus. On the other hand, the results point out that all participants responded better to the approach developed in this study as they all managed to successfully finish all the assigned tasks.

More than one-third of the U.S. citizens (over 70 million people) and 16% of children are classified as obese and are at risk of many diseases including heart disease. Research indicates that 65% of Americans over the age of twenty years old are considered overweight. To address this public health issue, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has proposed new nutritional guidelines for restaurant menus. Thus, the current study investigated the preferences of quick service restaurant (QSR) industry consumers with reference to the newly proposed U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations. This study includes development and redesigning of drive thru menus to comply with the FDA guidelines. A 3x2 factorial design experiment was conducted using real drive thru menus from three major national restaurant chains. The control group consisted of normal drive thru menus obtained from national restaurant chains, and the experimental group was comprised of two sets of pre-tested experimental menus complying with the FDA guidelines. The first set of experimental menus includes presentation of calorie information for all menu items offered. The second set of experimental menus includes color coded calorie specific menu categories (low, regular and high). A set of research hypotheses were developed and data was collected from heavy users of QSR units using Qualtrics software. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS. The obtained results indicated that the QSR menus designed to comply with the FDA’s guidelines do not result in loss of revenues as commonly feared by the restaurant industry. But interestingly the second set of experiment menus with color coded nutritional categories (low, regular, high) have led to increased consumer patronage and consumers’ willingness to pay. In iv addition, color coded nutritional menus were preferred over FDA suggested menus designs. The results from the current study are of significant importance to the QSR industry as they strive to comply with the new nutrition guidelines of FDA for drive thru menus

This thesis explores current guidelines for the development of menu systems in virtual reality with the main focus aimed toward gaming environments. These guidelines were gathered with the help of a literature study and two expert interviews. A game environment was created as a platform to test the systems. A 2D menu system and a 3D menu system were implemented with the help of gathered guidelines. The prototype was tested with participants in an experiment and empirical data was gathered and analyzed. The measured data shows minor differences in inefficiency, error rate, and learnability but a greater difference in immersiveness thus resulting in a subjectively preferred system to be 3D based.