12 Apr
2007
12 Apr
'07
9:47 p.m.
At 12:18 PM 4/12/2007, der Mouse wrote:
Two seconds is hogwash - when you use an editor daily, it gets
into your blood, and you have a hard time NOT using those keystrokes
automatically when you are in another environment.
And where is the mention of users time taken to determine which of
a zillion little icons to click on (I often have to "hover" over
them until the description pops up) - or the time wasted when you
"miss" a section on a drop-down menu (or closely spaced icons) and
have to recover from it.
It's been my observation that such "studies" are typically performed
by a group of GUI supportors with some of them taking the mouse, and
the others taking a list of command-keys which they have to keep
looking at (hence the two seconds). Often the task measured is some
lookup function, not involving extensive keyboard entry (where letting
go and re-acquiring the mouse gets tedious). Not surprisingly, the
results show that the mouse is vastly superiour and we should all
immediately remove the cursor and control keys from our keyboards.
In case you guys haven't figured it out yet - pretty much anything can
be measured in such a way that it appears to be superiour to anything
else.
Dave
Dilbert: Our products are killing people.
Pointy haired guy: No, upper management will not like thats
let me think....
Pointy haired guy: There's been a decline in unsatisfied customers!
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html
*Two seconds*? Just to remember the keystroke??
*Definitely*
unpracticed users! Even when using Windows (which I occasionally do at
work), I can windows-R-return and get a command window up faster than
the time it's supposed to take me to merely remember how to do it.
No doubt there will be a standard distribution of experience
and elapsed times, as well as many other subtle differences.
I don't think it takes years to learn and rely on chords and
function key shortcuts. Months or weeks, maybe, if you used
them all day. I'd also argue that there's an angle of physical-based
memory involved, too. My fingers remember CTRL/X CTRL/C CTRL/V because
I'm cutting, copying and pasting while typing, but I also have
a gestural memory corresponding to the location of various
pop-up contextual menus within other apps.
I would hope there have been more studies since Apple's.