Re: [9fans] Mousing is faster than typing but users do not believe it

[errno <errno@cox.net>]

On Wednesday, June 15, 2011 09:27:49 AM Jacob Todd wrote:
> There's an article on the wiki containing links to related info, also.
>

Does anyone have the actual text of this $50 million dollar research
apple performed? Does anyone know the actual parameters and
proficiency levels of the human subjects involved in the test? Or is
is it really the case that all we have amounts to:

"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."

and:

"It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press."

... from some guy (Tog) who generally summarized something about something 
back in 1989; the entire result of this "cool $50 million", to point out at
that... for _new_ users unfamiliar with the mouse and unfamiliar with the
equivalent keyboard-shortcuts pertaining to an undisclosed range of specific
operations... that the mouse was indeed faster? 

Well, shit howdy! Fathom that.  For a new user. The mouse may in fact be
faster. For certain operations.  

News flash!

Our 50 bazillion dollar research has shown that tricycles are faster than
bicycles. ( ... for unskilled cyclists. )

And that automatic transmissions are faster than manual. ( ... for untrained 
drivers. )

Crawling is quicker than running. ( ... for children who haven't learned to
walk. ) 


Context is everything.


And, I know this may be really hard to believe for you flat-earth mousers
out there, who have absorbed Tog's incredibly informative articles on the 
important specifics of the research he cited... but I guarantee it doesn't 
take me _2_freaking_seconds_ to decide what keys to press; unless of 
course it's a brand new shortcut that I'm completely unfamiliar with.

And I absolutely _promise_ that if I was somehow irrevocably burdened
with:

...a... two... se...cond... de...lay... for... ev...er...y... sin...gle...
key...board... co...mmand... short...cut...  

... that I _most_certainly_ would prefer the mouse for all operations.

Yeah... I suppose it takes 2 seconds for a nascar driver to decide what
gear he should shift into, and what pedal he should press down on, 
every time he commands his vehicle to perform an operation.


I can definitely understand and accept a certain cognitive-subjective
time-perceptual-bias for mouse-vs-keyboard operations under very
particular instances: such as the new-user unaccustomed to a mouse
who is also learning a collection of unfamiliar keyboard shortcuts at the 
same time, might result in said user intuitively feeling like the keyboard
shortcuts were quicker. 

But that's an extremely narrow band of use-case; and it certainly does not
apply in any way shape or form when dealing with skilled and experienced 
users who, after undergoing the requisite learning-curve,  have internalized
to muscle-memory a library of keyboard-based operations.