Efficient user interfaces

Question

Speed and learnability do not directly fight each other, but it seems easy enough to design such a GUI that lacks either (or both) of them. GUI designers seem to prefer \'easy t

Answer 1

While I've been writing my own UI I've understood couple of things myself.

I imitated vim, but at the same time realized why it's so fast to use for text editing. It is because it acknowledges a thing: People prefer doing one thing at a time (inserting text, navigating around, selecting text), but they may switch the task often.

This means that you can pack different activities into different modes if you keep the mode switching schemes simple. It gives space for more commands. The user also gets better chances at learning the full interface because they are sensibly grouped already.

Vim is practically stuffed full of commands, every letter in the keyboard does something in vim, depending on the mode. Still I can remember most of them. And it's all because of modes.

I know bunch of projects that sneer at mode-dependent behavior. Main argument is the uncertainty of which mode you are in. In vim I'm never uncertain about the mode where I am in. Therefore I say the interface design is a failure if a trained user fails to recognize in which mode the interface is operating at the moment.