Improving Dropdowns with a Sprinkling of Linear Algebra

David Jones · Mar 7, 2013 · Share:

Dropdowns: you use them every day but how can they be improved?

Ben Kamens writes about how Amazon uses a sprinkling of linear algebra to improve user experience when interacting with their mega dropdown.

Before

Moving the cursor from the 'Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry' menu item to 'Clothing' in the submenu was previously quite tricky. Get it wrong and you'll find yourself opening a different drop down menu. Frustrating.

Dropdown that is tricky to navigate

After

Amazon opens up the area that the cursor can move through by calculating a triangle between your mouse and the top and bottom of the open dropdown menu.

Now you can quickly and directly move your cursor to 'Clothing' without frustration.

Dropdown that is easy to navigate with linear algebra

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"Improving Dropdowns with a Sprinkling of Linear Algebra" written by David Jones.

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