When you’re using software and you want to do something fast (and I mean really fast) you won’t use a mouse (at least if it’s possible at all). If you don’t believe try to look at people making up invoices in very busy company or at those selling tickets on crowded station. They don’t use the mouse. Why is it so? Because mouse is slow and they have a lot of work to do.
Try to delete the last word you’ve just written with the mouse. Ctrl+Z is faster. Open the Task Manager. Ctrl+Shift+Esc is faster. Open a file. Ctrl+O is faster.
Some time ago I was sending many official e-mails so I needed to insert my very official 7-line signature (our marketing division copyrights). I was sending even more unofficial e-mails without signature so I didn’t want to have one inserted to a new e-mail as default. So every time I wanted to sign the official e-mail I was opening Insert menu in my Outlook, then choosing Signature, and then my default signature. It takes about 3 second at best. You won’t believe – Alt+I, S, Enter is much faster. I can do it in much less than a second without any training.
You can say that it’s only 2-3 seconds of difference. Multiply it by number of operations you make to complete particular task. Then, multiply it by number of times when you do the task. Then, multiply it by average cost per hour… Now you see the case.
It gets harder when you think about web application. You don’t have full control over the keyboard then. Alt+O opens a new file not from the web application, but from a browser. Ctrl+Shift+Esc still opens the task manager whatever you’d try to do. It’s just out of your control… partially. Remeber, most of keystrokes will be send to the web applications and then it’s your choice what to do with them. Vast majority of websites do nothing…
However guys from Google Reader (a RSS reader from Google laboratories) know all of that. They’ve developed nice keyboard-driven GUI. BTW: If they managed to make it, so should you. I really like the user interface, but I wouldn’t say it’s finished. When I use J for the next post the whole screen is repositioned – it goes to “home” position with at least one third of the screen wasted with different toolbars. Hey, I don’t want to read toolbars, I want to read posts. Unfortunately post I wanted to read now doesn’t fit the screen and I have to scroll it down. Funny, when I use the mouse it works correctly or just the way I want it to work (but that’s the same from user perspective). Another thing – I sorted my feeds by subjects labeling them. I don’t see easy way (a shortcut) to go to the list of labels and change the current one. What more, I tried to do that and used my Tab a hundred times to get to Label drop-down control only to find my keyboard works ambiguously there. The first down-arrow changes the label, but the second scrolls the screen down. How confusing. Still, Google guys have a lot work to do, even if they think it’s finished product – I haven’t seen “beta” in the Reader logo recently.
You can say that’s caviling, but the truth is if you want to develop no-mouse user interface do it perfectly or don’t even bother to invest time to do it. One little non-intuitive annoying feature can ruin the whole work. It’s enough when the user is forced to take the mouse once during the task. If it is so – you’ve failed.
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