It's the 30 year anniversary of CHI’88 (May 15–19, 1988), where Jack Callahan, Ben Shneiderman, Mark Weiser and I (Don Hopkins) presented our paper “An Empirical Comparison of Pie vs. Linear Menus”. We found pie menus to be about 15% faster and with a significantly lower error rate than linear menus!

So I've written up a 30 year retrospective:

This article will discuss the history of what’s happened with pie menus over the last 30 years (and more), present both good and bad examples, including ideas half baked, experiments performed, problems discovered, solutions attempted, alternatives explored, progress made, software freed, products shipped, as well as setbacks and impediments to their widespread adoption.

Here is the main article, and some other related articles:

Pie Menus: A 30 Year Retrospective.
By Don Hopkins, Ground Up Software, May 15, 2018.
Take a Look and Feel Free!

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1

This is the paper we presented 30 years ago at CHI'88:

An Empirical Comparison of Pie vs. Linear Menus.
Jack Callahan, Don Hopkins, Mark Weiser () and Ben Shneiderman.
Computer Science Department University of Maryland College Park, Maryland 20742
() Computer Science Laboratory, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, Calif. 94303.
Presented at ACM CHI’88 Conference, Washington DC, 1988.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/an-empirical-comparison-of-pi...

Open Sourcing SimCity.
Excerpt from page 289–293 of “Play Design”, a dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Computer Science by Chaim Gingold.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a2...

Recommendation Letter for Krystian Samp’s Thesis: The Design and Evaluation of Graphical Radial Menus.
I am writing this letter to enthusiastically recommend that you consider Krystian Samp’s thesis, “The Design and Evaluation of Graphical Radial Menus”, for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/don-hopkins-october-31-2012-e...

Constructionist Educational Open Source SimCity.
Illustrated and edited transcript of the YouTube video playlist: HAR 2009: Lightning talks Friday. Videos of the talk at the end.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/har-2009-lightning-talk-trans...

How to Choose with Pie Menus — March 1988.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/how-to-choose-with-pie-menus-...

BAYCHI October Meeting Report: Natural Selection: The Evolution of Pie Menus, October 13, 1998.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/baychi-october-meeting-report...

The Sims Pie Menus.
The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74d...

The Design and Implementation of Pie Menus.
They’re Fast, Easy, and Self-Revealing.
Originally published in Dr. Dobb’s Journal, Dec. 1991.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-design-and-implementation...

Gesture Space.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/gesture-space-842e3cdc7102

Empowered Pie Menu Performance at CHI’90, and Other Weird Stuff.
A live performance of pie menus, the PSIBER Space Deck and the Pseudo Scientific Visualizer at the CHI’90 Empowered show. And other weird stuff inspired by Craig Hubley’s sound advice and vision that it’s possible to empower every user to play around and be an artist with their computer.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/empowered-pie-menu-performanc...

OLPC Sugar Pie Menu Discussion
Excerpts from the discussion on the OLPC Sugar developer discussion list about pie menus for PyGTK and OLPC Sugar.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/olpc-sugar-pie-menu-discussio...

Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser.
By Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Rodrigo Botafogo, Don Hopkins, William Weiland.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/designing-to-facilitate-brows...

Pie Menu FUD and Misconceptions.
Dispelling the fear, uncertainty, doubt and misconceptions about pie menus.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menu-fud-and-misconceptio...

The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication Routines — October 1989.
Written by Don Hopkins, October 1989.
University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Computer Science Department, College Park, Maryland 20742.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-shape-of-psiber-space-oct...

The Amazing Shneiderman.
Sung to the tune of “Spiderman”, with apologies to Paul Francis Webster and Robert “Bob” Harris, and with respect to Ben Shneiderman.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-amazing-schneiderman-9df9...

And finally this has absolutely nothing to do with pie menus, except for the shape of a pizza pie:

The Story of Sun Microsystems PizzaTool.
How I accidentally ordered my first pizza over the internet.

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...