I’ve been studying this for my research. The current conclusion so far, related to perception of flow, is that with keyboard interactions, you’re consistently a

I’ve been studying this for my research. The current conclusion so far, related to perception of flow, is that with keyboard interactions, you’re consistently and progressively closer to your goal. As for the mouse, regardless of timing to achieve the goal, there’s generally a lot of waste, that is, the energy spent does not reflect a step towards the intended goal, because you are moving into space generically and non-deterministically. Mouse interactions are prone to failure/cancellation, since the goal is achieved only at the last instant, one diversion and you are back to square one. Hence the class of actions that must be faster on the mouse are the ones where the goal is immediately and progressively achieved by spatial input, such as scrolling, drawing, etc. since energy is directly translated into effects. Mouse is obviously suited for continuous input, and keyboard for discrete inputs. For all classes of actions apt to be broken into discrete steps, keyboard control will provide consistent and reproducible results. Further, those chunks can be optimized and compressed with mnemonics, whereas mouse actions cannot be compressed. There’s no one versus the other, as both devices are complimentary. With that said, performing discrete interactions with the mouse is a poor use of the tool, regardless of anyone’s preferences. That’s a fact.