[diskzero]

Marking Menus [1], Pie Menus, Radial Menus and friends have been around for a while. There is good body of research on them, with some recent research done on their use in multi-touch environments. [2]

While working at DreamWorks, I would often watch artists navigate complex marking menu hierarchies and invoke a command before the menu items themselves could actually be read by a non-trained user. In our custom lighting tool, you could execute the marking menu command by invoking the menu command and making them mouse movement before the menu actually drew.

1. https://www.billbuxton.com/MMUserLearn.html 2. https://damassets.autodesk.net/content/dam/autodesk/research...

[int_19h]

It was used in some games to great effect as well, e.g. Neverwinter Nights. Same story there - once you memorize where the commands are, each invocation effectively becomes a mouse gesture performed without even looking at the bubbles.

https://www.gamerguides.com/assets/guides/192/neverwinter_ni...