I would be willing to bet the the stopwatch studies cited were based on a highly restricted cases. A mouse is best where mouse movement is limited to short moves with relatively large icons or menu selections as a target, and where no significant data entry is required. Long mouse moves requiring precise positioning at the end take more time and skill than short moves to large icons or simple menu selections. Particularly annoying are multi-level menus where a slight error in mouse movement can cause the needed sub menu to vanish, or slider controls that required very precise positioning to get a specific value for consistent behavior. Ditto for clickable icons that are hidden so well you have to do a Google search to identify the appearance and location of the icon.
"Typing" arbitrary data using a mouse keyboard is the equivalent of hunt and peck one-finger typing and abysmally slow compared to keyboard entry for anyone with even moderate touch-typing skills. Editing invariably requires some arbitrary data entry. The worst of both worlds is a process that can only be done by a combination of mouse clicks and keyboard entry where a good typist must continually shift mouse hand between mouse and keyboard. Make that a repetitive process that is needed hundreds of times, and I find that a process that involves the entire hand and arm will become physically tiresome quicker than one that just requires finger movement. There are definitely some activities for which the mouse is not the best solution. But, keyboard alternatives to mouse point-and-click are only faster if you use them often enough to remember them and don't have to look them up. Joel C. Ewing On 1/28/21 8:12 AM, Pew, Curtis G wrote: > On Jan 27, 2021, at 7:08 PM, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote: >> Because using a mouse is a productivity killer! >> > Is it? > > “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.” > > https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html > > -- Joel C. Ewing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
