David W. Fenton wrote:
On 28 Jun 2009 at 9:21, dhbailey wrote:
David W. Fenton wrote:
On 26 Jun 2009 at 21:00, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
I have several friends that are graphic designers, and I'm in awe of
watching them work in Photoshop or Illustrator without having to use the
mouse at all. When I asked about it, they told me their productivity would
shrink by 3/4 if they didn't have the keyboard shortcuts.
And yet, the actual research on this subject completely contradicts
that user perception. That is, Apple and Microsoft's usability labs
have run the tests many times and mousing is faster than keyboarding.
It's counterintuitive to me, but them's the facts.
(BTW, those who think there's no keyboard equivalent of RIGHT-CLICK
on Windows are wrong -- there's an entire key devoted to it on any
standard Windows keyboard, including laptops)
Of course, Apple and Microsoft had a vested interest in the
research proving that mousing was faster.
They do? How, exactly?
They sell mice. They sell machines with user interfaces
based on mousing. They tout the use of the mouse as the
best user-interface.
What could be more vested than that? Finding research to
support what you are already marketing is high-stakes aspect
of modern marketing.
That is one of the unspoken assumptions behind
much of the criticism of the reported results, yet nobody that I've
ever seen has ever bothered to unpack that and explain exactly why
Apple and Microsoft would benefit from misrepresenting research
results.
I'm not saying they misrepresented any research results. I
would never accuse them of that, but I will suggest that
they may have set up the research in a manner which would
more likely result in one conclusion over another.
It's one thing to misrepresent results, but it's quite
another to skew the tests to favor one response over
another. Pollsters do that all the time.
Sure, in the early days of the Mac (in the 80s), when Apple
was promoting the first mainstream GUI, there was resistance and a
need to promote the utility of the mouse. But that's long in the
past, and Microsoft has always maintained full keyboard compatibility
(e.g., all menus are keyboard accessible and always have been -- it's
built into MS's development tools and always has been). If they were
so all-fired devoted to mousing, why would they offer that?
Because they need the support of power users to show the
non-power-users that a particular program or UI is worth
investing in. Power-users will memorize keystrokes,
non-power-users will mouse. They can use the same software,
making its marketability much greater.
Has any truly independent research verified their results?
I can't cite chapter and verse, but I believe so.
For many users who get comfortable with the mouse as a way
of avoiding memorizing all sorts of keyboard shortcuts, it
truly is faster. But for those who have memorized keyboard
shortcuts, for many applications (I would put Finale when
used in Speedy Entry without a midi keyboard attached into
this category) every time the hands have to leave the
keyboard to move the mouse, time is lost.
So you say.
The research says the opposite.
Until you can demonstrate that the research is flawed and produces
unreliable results, I'm going to believe those who've actually taken
the time to design mechanisms for testing the proposition, rather
than going with the gut feelings of individual users.
And that's fine -- I'm not trying to convince anybody to
adopt my point of view. But just as I don't accept
Republican-sponsored polls which show that the vast majority
of Americans espouse Republican Ideals and I don't accept
Democrat-sponsored polls which show that the vast majority
of Americans espouse Democrat Ideals (they can't both be
correct, can they?) I also don't accept mouse-vendor
research which shows that using a mouse is the faster interface.
--
David H. Bailey
[email protected]
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