[kls]

I was with a fortune 10 company as a tech executive, we had an effort to move all of the call center technology over to web based technologies in a modernization effort. The call center lost over 15 million dollars in revenue in the first week when we moved from the old UNIX terminal app to the web UI, after an extensive study it was deemed the issue was loss of speed due to lack of keyboard shortcuts and navigation. For power-users keyboard shortcuts allow them to navigate and use the app up to 3 to 4 times faster than a mouse based interface. If you ever watch a 3D artist work in Max, Maya or Blender this becomes evident quickly. It is not that keyboard use is the pinnacle, it is that in high use cases it saves time and money.

[afavour]

The situation you’re describing is one where trained professionals use one and only one UI.

Web sites aren’t like that. They’re used by a vast number of people of differing technical ability, and different sites do incredibly different things.

I’m not saying a keyboard UI is never right. I’m saying that it isn’t universally right.

[treis]

I do this for a living and I am constantly amazed at the amount of money we are paid to make things worse. Of course we add in things like chat, email, and other channels but the day to day experience of the users usually gets a lot worse.

The systems we put in are easier to use and have more controls around who can do what. It makes the users more interchangeable and cuts training time. The cost of that is the top speed that users can get stuff done is drastically reduced.