3 hours ago, Isaiah said:For example, in your video you complained about small GUI elements that demand too much precision from the user and recommended a kind of runway vs helipad approach, reasoning that "the less precise you need to be the faster you our". Okay, fair enough. But here in the forums you complain about increased travel distances being inefficient, which your very own "runway" concept would actually produce. The very mouse gestures you love being the perfect example of that.
If we are considering the "runway vs helipad approach", then Fitts's law is something that is very important. It provides a fundamental model of UX interaction and states that "the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target." It can easily be used to justify some of Ross's ideas, such as pie menus and hot corners (the browser shortcut he showed).
I would argue that the efficiency of mouse gestures is very dependent on their design. For one, they are able to match the user's actual motions to what they intend to motion. They also need to be considered in terms of (a) what are the most commonly used gestures and (b) what are the easiest gestures to motion. I think that where mouse gestures tend to suffer is in discoverability (like CLI commands), but demanding too much precision I think is a non-issue in a well thought-out system.
3 hours ago, Isaiah said:But for the sake of argument let's assume for a moment that greater travel distances are less efficient. Well with the alt-tab method I mentioned you instantly see all open app names at once with very helpful preview images, which is an objectively faster way to identify them than your method of moving the cursor all the way down to the bottom of the screen and across each icon to see the name of each, one at a time. And there displayed in the center of the screen closer to where the cursor most likely already is. And finally you only have to move your cursor to the exact app you want once identified. Meaning the alt-tab method is faster either way because it requires less travel distance and precision overall.
An interesting result of Fitts's law is that the edges of computer monitors can be considered to have infinite width (that also goes for double with corners, where the edges effectively collide and have infinite dimensions). So effectively, the dock shortcuts are infinitely tall because they do not require a deceleration phase. This means that one can be very efficient with orienting their mouse to the given application and opening it. The edges, along with the corners, are your most valuable real estate.
Anecdotally I would also like to add that I don't ever use the Alt-Tab menu in conjunction with the mouse, rather I use it one-dimensionally with the keyboard, mainly because that would require me to (a) hold down Alt-Tab and release Tab, (b) look at the previews and identify what I want, and (c) orient my mouse to the application and press the button to open it. That is much more complicated than just pressing Alt-Tab however many times until I see the application I want.
Recommended reading on Fitts's law:
Visualizing Fitts's Law — A good introduction
When You Shouldn’t Use Fitts's Law To Measure User Experience — Some pitfalls and possible solutions
A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts — This article uses examples to give you a great understanding of the underlying concepts