Using Menu Design

Why?

Designing your course to look and read the way you want is important for you as a designer and for student ease of use. Modifying the menu item names to fit into your normal vocabulary is important and will make it easier for you to point students to correct sections of the course. You are the designer. Learn to make the technology work for you.

Implications for Teaching and Learning.

• The way your menu looks to the students is important. If it is difficult to read the names of the items, usability suffers.
  • Make sure that students can easily read the text, regardless of your selection. 
    • We encourage contrast between the color of the background and the color of the text.
      • Too little or too much contrast can reduce readability. There is a reason that police tape is black on a yellow background.
    • Typically, you want to avoid buttons that have patterns since text mixed with patterns may be difficult to read. If you use patterns, play with text color options to pick the best color for the text to ensure readability with the pattern.
• There are considerations other than aesthetics for choosing buttons or text style menus.
  • Buttons have fewer font choices and have limits on the amount of text you can use.

Promising Practices for TWU.

• Consider how lengthy the titles of the menu items will be before you decide on a style (button or text).
• Test a menu as both buttons and as text to see which style appeals to your sense of design.
• Choose colors for menu items that are complementary to your overall course design.
• In general, dark text on a lighter background produces more readability.
• Strive to make the menu uncluttered.
• Use secondary organizational elements to group your menu items.
  • Text option
    • You can create a line to divide similar elements by using Manage Course Menu. Rather than putting words into the Name area – insert a line. You can then move the line to where you want it using the Manage Course Menu option to select order of menu items.
    • You can indent menu items by inserting blank spaces in front of the text.
    • To place space between one menu item and another, follow the item title with <p>.
  • Button Options
    • HTML tags for Bold, Italics, and Underline are options for buttons.
      • Bold - <b>title</b>
      • Italics - <i>title</i>
      • Underline - <u>title</u>
    • HTML tags for font size are options for buttons.
      • The default font size is 2.
        • <font size=”3”>title</font> will make the font a little larger
        • <font size=”4”>title</font> will make the font larger than the selection above.

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