Using Strokes as Command Shortcuts: Cognitive Benefits and Toolkit Support

Overview & Synopsis

This paper investigates using stroke gestures as shortcuts to menu selection. We first experimentally measured the performance and ease of learning of stroke shortcuts in comparison to keyboard shortcuts when there is no mnemonic link between the shortcut and the command. While both types of shortcuts had the same level of performance with enough practice, stroke shortcuts had substantial cognitive advantages in learning and recall. With the same amount of practice, users could successfully recall more shortcuts and make fewer errors with stroke shortcuts than with keyboard shortcuts. The second half of the paper focuses on UI development support and articulates guidelines for toolkits to implement stroke shortcuts in a wide range of software applications. We illustrate how to apply these guidelines by introducing the Stroke Shortcuts Toolkit (SST) which is a library for adding stroke shortcuts to Java Swing applications with just a few lines of code.