I would never have predicted this:
We've done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:
  • Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
  • The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.

This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers' belief that the keyboard is faster.

People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: it is boring to find it because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive engagement.

It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist.
Tog is the man, and they did an incredible amount of user testing (as opposed to just thinking about it,) so I'm sure this is right. On the other hand, I know I'm faster with keyboard shortcuts than the mouse, and I don't think it's amnesia. (via daring fireball)
- jim 11-01-2007 12:04 am

In the column, he mentions editing functions as key sequences (command-C, etc.) as probably being faster than mousing. I'd expand that to anything that's rote. For example, I manually download email, manually queue messages, and manually send email. I have muscle memory for the key sequences that do this. Mousing around to the buttons to do these things is way slower. In part because I almost never use those buttons.

Switching to a new keyboard can hose up certain things. Laptops are notorious for moving around function keys, like page up, page down, delete, home, end, etc. I still have to think too much with my new work laptop. And at some point I want to ditch this laptop for an ultra-portable (similar to my trusty old X200), so I'll have to relearn.
- mark 11-01-2007 3:11 am


great info....
- Skinny 11-01-2007 12:49 pm





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