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That article claims that exactly the same thing but swapped: > People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything oth

That article claims that exactly the same thing but swapped: > People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: it is boring to find it because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive engagement. > It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist. > While the keyboard users in this case feels as though they have gained two seconds over the mouse users, the opposite is really the case.

bachmeier 2y ago
That's still focused exclusively on the time spent doing the task. Maybe a more extreme example will clarify why the methodology was seriously flawed. Suppose there's a bug in the app such that it frequently crashes shortly after using the mouse. You have to restart the app and reload the data after every crash. We can all agree that using the mouse is not faster than the keyboard if you have a bug like that. 100% of users would say that using the keyboard is faster. Yet their methodology would lead to exactly the same conclusion that users are wrong and $50 million of research has shown it's faster to use the mouse. Assuming "all else equal" when it's not can lead to really bad decisions.
- subjectsigma 2y ago
  > That's still focused exclusively on the time spent doing the task. What do you think the sentence “acquiring it every time they want to do anything” means? Buying it from the store??