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Balancing Use Between the Keyboard and Mouse?
initialE wonders: "A friend of mine, working for a bank, mentioned to me that she had just undergone training for the migration of applications from their legacy systems (think DOS-based interface, AS400 powered) to a snazzy new web application. Whereas the younger users were impressed by the bling it provided, the older users were less happy, and the reason provided was that the application lacked shortcut keys to doing their most common tasks. The newer staff were mighty pleased not to have to learn all those arcane commands, of course. This led me to consider a few things. I administer Windows-based systems, and more and more I am choosing to use whatever key-based interface is available - I don't even use the file explorer anymore, preferring to type 'WindowsKey+R', and typing in the file path (Windows helps with auto-complete). It's better for me to keep my hands on the keyboard and not touch the mouse. It's certainly not because my mouse is bad, I just don't want to release the focus on the keyboard. And it works - I get things done a lot faster than anyone else in my department. Have we placed too much emphasis on making GUI-based applications, and left behind what was a perfectly good way of doing things?"
Yes.
"The command line is like writing a poem, while using a mouse is like pointing and grunting"
Er, something like that.
I like both, both have thier place.
Some times click click and being done with something is great, while other times having a command line to type EXACTLY what you want is a life saver.
To me, it's all about what you want to do.
Chat (irssi for irc and bitlbee) is command line if possible.
Web design (Dreamweaver MX 2004) is a good balance. Point, click, edit code, flex the geek and the mouse.
Graphic design (GIMP) is almost 100% mouse for me. GIMP and World of Warcraft are the reason I bought a trackball.
Pretty Pictures!
This is a classic example of Easy to Use VS Easy to Learn.
Modern UI designers have an unfair bias towards designing for the new user. The emphasis is to make the new user get up to speed as painlessly as possible. In other words, the design of the inerface should cater for "Easy to Learn". This is a fundamental principle in modern user interface design.
Now. "Easy to Use" is not the same thing as "Easy to Learn". They are not necessarily orthongonal, but they tend to be. So while your new graphical application is easy to learn for the new user, the experienced power user finds it cumbersome to use. Note that a easy to use application can take a long time to master. For example, all the short cut keys in your old application requires effort and time to memorize.
The standard argument is that if the application is hard to learn, people won't buy it. Therefore, if we need to sacrifice ease of use, for the sake of ease of learning, so be it.
Have we placed too much emphasis on making GUI-based applications, and left behind what was a perfectly good way of doing things?
YES. Next question?
Seriously, this is a classic example of a common problem in IT. The problem is called "not having a fucking clue". Instead of objectively determining what the best solution to a problem is, people just use whatever they know. All they know is web apps, so that's what they create.
For repetitive, screen-oriented tasks, where the interface is stable, and the user can be trained ahead of time, a simple text GUI with keyboard shortcuts is almost always more efficient and therefore cost-effective. Of course, you shouldn't assume this without objective measurements (use a stopwatch, as the poster above suggested), but in my experience it's true.
Haven't you ever seen a receptionist or a teller staring at her screen, moving her hands from the "mousing position" (one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard) to the "keyboard position" (touch-typing position) and back again? She enters some data, uses the mouse to get to the next field or screen, goes back to entering data.. and it takes twice as long as it should.
Some of this is lack of training of course ("with our snazzy web-based interface, you DON'T NEED to train" .. yeah, what bullshit.. how about telling her about the Tab key for instance?).. but much of it is the stupid interface.
Not to mention that now instead of display and keyboard, employees now need display, keyboard, and MOUSE .. it gets gunked up, it falls off the desk, it breaks and needs to be replaced.
Some tasks are good for the mouse, but data entry, and/or paging through screens is not one of them. For that you just need a text UI (with appropriate use of color) and a reliable keyboard.
Usually the best thing to do is ask the experienced users who are already efficient on the old system: "what do you think of the new system"? Which I believe you did.. Of course, most companies don't seem to bother with that...
Ah, the age old debate between GUIs and CLIs.
This isn't anything new. People have been discussing this for a long time. It's pretty well known that GUIs are better for some tasks and CLIs are better for others. Rather than trying to proclaim that one is dead, people really should work on making them work better together.
Anyhow. Until people start making more advances in that arena, in the meantime, I've found that using a keyboard with an integrated TrackPoint works great. (You can find old IBM ones on eBay or get some from pckeyboards.com.) Any modern OS supports multiple input pointing devices, so if you need to do a lot of mousing but only a little bit of typing, you still can have a normal mouse available to you. If, however, you need to do a lot of typing but only a little bit of mousing, you can keep your fingers at your keyboard the whole time. It's the best of both worlds, and I think all keyboards should come like this.