Marking Menu

A marking menu is a radial (pie-shaped) menu that can be operated in two modes: a beginner mode that displays labelled wedges around the cursor for the user to aim at, and an expert mode that lets an experienced user draw the directional stroke toward the desired item without waiting for the menu to appear. Introduced by Kurtenbach and colleagues in the 1990s, marking menus are valued in accessibility and assistive-technology design because the same gesture works for novices and experts — no separate learning path for keyboard shortcuts, and motor effort scales gracefully as the user gains fluency. They have been adapted for touchscreens, stylus input, eye tracking, and, as in the VoiceDraw system, continuous vowel-based voice input ('vocal marking menus').