Contextual Menus: Delivering Relevant Tools for Tasks

Summary: Contextual menus are displayed on demand and contain a small set of relevant actions, related to a control, a piece of content, a view in an app, or an area of the UI. When designed right, they deliver relevant tools for completing tasks without adding clutter to the interface.

Having the right tools available in any given situation makes all the difference, especially when it comes to correctly and efficiently getting things done. Without the relevant tools, we waste time and are left feeling frustrated, lost, and confused. Just as bad: when there are too many tools around, we waste time looking for the right one or end up satisficing with a suboptimal tool, instead.

The digital space is no different; in any given application, there’s an abundance of tools to use, tasks to complete, menu options to explore, and commands to execute. As such, an important user-interface element that narrows the set of available commands and associates them to relevant tasks is the contextual menu.

What is a Contextual Menu?

Definition: A contextual menu is a type of menu that appears on demand and contains a small set of relevant actions related to a control, an area of the interface, a piece of data in the application, or a view of the application. Usually, this context is given by the current selection or has otherwise been specified by the user before invoking the contextual menu.