Of mice and men

Kellie has generated some heated controversy over data entry and methods of
doing it.

I looked through the thread and noticed that most people in it are not in
favour of date pickers, even though Richard offers a choice between GUI or
text for dates, as do I.

I think Kellie has some good points. I further think that, as we have seen
here many times, people tend to favour what they are familiar with.

The 'perceived wisdom' is that keystrokes are quicker for data entry. I
wouldn't argue that they certainly are if you are a trained data entry
professional and the input is all numeric, but what about the average user
just entering data to an application?

Gavan suggested that his keystroked date entry had unassailable advantages
over any other form of input. How many clicks would it take on your date
picker to do this (very contrived and narrow) task?

Could it be done in less than 30 key strokes?
Yes. Certainly.
Would it be worth doing?
That depends... what's the saving?

Prompted by this 'challenge' I decided to have another look at the whole
business of data entry in the 21st century and see if the 'perceived wisdom'
really stands up.

Now, if you don't have access to a GUI environment, you might as well stop
reading here. (Besides, your mind is already irretrievably closed and you
might as well just keep banging away at the keyboard and be happy until
retirement...:-))

I decided to do some tests and see if the mouse is REALLY any more
difficult than the keyboard, for the average non-professional, user.

Some of you might like to try it for yourselves:

http://taurangawriters.org.nz/CLCentry.htm

Obviously, when designing data entry and user interfaces there are a myriad
things to be considered. That was what prompted Kellie's post in the first
place. I wasn't happy about the way some of her ideas were dismissed, and
the perceived wisdom, or prejudicial opinion was trotted out as being Holy
Writ. (There has been more than enough religious discussion in this forum of
late and it doesn't need to extend to computer programming.)

It's time there was some rethinking in the way things are done. Fresh minds
bring fresh ideas. (An idea should be considered 'good' until it is seen not
to work, not just imagined not to work...).

It will not surprise me if different people arrive at different conclusions
from the same set of tests in the above.

Get someone who ISN'T a COBOL programmer. Let them try it out, preferably
before you have suggested what the desired result should be, and post your
conclusions to this thread.

At least it will be on topic...

Pete.

Frankly, I was really surprised the results I obtained from the link above.






Why not consider the whole business of data entry in the 21st century and
try it woyhout preconception.



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