Usage
For the novice, pie menus are easy because they are a self-revealing gestural interface: They show what you can do and direct you how to do it. By clicking and popping up a pie menu, looking at the labels, moving the pointer in the desired direction, then clicking to make a selection, you learn the menu and practice the gesture to "mark ahead" ("mouse ahead" in the case of a mouse, "wave ahead" in the case of a dataglove). With a little practice, it becomes quite easy to mark ahead even through nested pie menus.
For the expert, they're efficient because—without even looking—you can move in any direction, and mark ahead so fast that the menu doesn't even pop up. Only when used more slowly like a traditional menu, does a pie menu pop up on the screen, to reveal the available selections.
Most importantly, novices soon become experts, because every time you select from a pie menu, you practice the motion to mark ahead, so you naturally learn to do it by feel. As Jaron Lanier of VPL Research has remarked, "The mind may forget, but the body remembers." Pie menus take advantage of the body's ability to remember muscle motion and direction, even when the mind has forgotten the corresponding symbolic labels.
Read more about this topic: Pie Menu
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