Shortcuts are typical user’s best friend. Imagine you use word processor and there is no Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Imagine there’s no Alt+Tab combination. What a painful situation it would be. For example copying highlighted paragraph between documents. Instead of: Ctrl+C, Alt-Tab, Ctrl+V you would do: [mouse move to] edit menu, [click], [mouse move to] copy, [click], [mouse move to] taskbar, [click], [mouse move to] edit menu, [click], [yawn], [mouse move to] paste, [click], [time for a nap] and voila.
OK, I guess I don’t have to convince anyone keyboard is faster than mouse and using shortcuts is essential when you want to be quick with keyboard. But when you think about shortcuts in your application you should look deeper. A new invoice icon in sales module of ERP system. A wizard simplifying creation of a new project in IDE. All those mash-ups which are sets of shortcuts of different type. Yes, these are shortcuts too.
The deeper you think the smarter options you can find. One of our local taxi corporations in Krakow (Barbakan for those who live around) greet calling clients with IVR application with TTS-ed prompt. I hear (translated to English):
Hello, this is Barbakan Taxi. If you want to order a cab to 16 Kuznicy Street, waiting time 8 minutes, press one. If you want to order a cab to Central Railway Station, waiting time 4 minutes, press two. If you want to order a cab to 44 Jasnogorska Street, waiting time 12 minutes, press three…
Best possible shots for me indeed. Kuznicy Street is my home. I travel often by train so Railway Station would be another obvious choice for me, and Jasnogorska Street is my workplace. My wife asked me if I have created those list. No, not me. These are my most popular orders sorted by frequency. Shortcuts for the most frequently chosen options. What a nice present.
Of course, I have no illusions about reason why the system was implemented. Neither for my pleasure nor for my convenience, but to save dispatchers time. Anyway I don’t really care. As far as I can use those shortcuts to make the operation quicker and more convenient I like it.
There’s one important factor why I think this shortcut is valuable. It improves path I use very often. Above locations cover more than 90% of all my orders. If I had on the list several random locations or top 10 combined from preferences of a group of users it would be useless.
It is very likely that you have to think about your users individually when thinking about their shortcuts. That’s not so easy as paths beaten on the lawn by majority of walkers.
By the way, when talking about user experience, Barbakan’s website is, well, tragic. You don’t really have to understand Polish (yes, no English version) to see how dramatic it is. Definitely the worst website I’ve seen for months. Anyway, I wouldn’t check it if I wasn’t writing about new great feature those guys implemented in situations which are actually used by their clients (unlike checking the website).
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