Top all-time · #302
AskTog Home Page
Personal blog · asktog.com/columnsdesignculture
AskTog Home Page is a personal blog at asktog.com about design and culture. Since 2007, 168 different Hacker News readers have linked it 227 times, most often “Apple R&D (1989): Mousing is faster than keyboarding, but users don't believe it”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Bruce Tognazzini's asktog.com for his Apple-era HCI writing, especially the keyboard-vs-mouse study and his critiques of Apple's design direction. Commenters also cite his menu and interaction-design pages.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- One commenter calls the Raskin-linked paper one of their favourites and a good read on HCI; another calls the Fitts's Law article a good article; one points rea
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
AskTog, Human Interface Evangelism and Practical Design
Most-linked posts?
- Apple R&D (1989): Mousing is faster than keyboarding, but users don't believe it19 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2007-10-31
- Keyboard vs. The Mouse, Part 1 (1989)14 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2019-03-11
- Intuitive Equals Familiar (1994)8 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2009-07-25
- The Third User (2013)8 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2019-05-12
- A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2007-08-10
- Intuitive Equals Familiar (1994)7 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2018-06-23
- First Principles of Interaction Design7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2018-06-09
- Why Put Menu Bars There? A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts (Ask Tog, Feb '99)5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-06-26
- /columns/044top10docksucks.html5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-06-22
- /books/challengerExerpt.html5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-11-02
What Hacker News says?
Tog wrote about implementing this in MacOS: http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/2000-07ReaderMail.html#Anch...
Comment linking /readerMail/2000-07ReaderMail.html
on “Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown”Submitted Apple R&D (1989): Mousing is faster than keyboarding, but users don't believe it as a story · 119 points
HN discussionAs Apple's first human-interface designer puts it, Apple optmizes for looks good in a demo. Apple targets computer shoppers , not computer users . https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/
Comment linking /atc/the-third-user/
on “Perfectly Cropped”Submitted The Worst Interface Ever: The Self-Destruct Switch (2004) as a story · 114 points
HN discussion«One of the usability lessons of modern computing is that the mouse is a productivity killer.» Actually, one of the usability lessons of modern computing is that the mouse makes you faster, but the keyboard makes you think you're faster. reference: http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
Comment linking /TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
on “TermKit - a graphical terminal replacement”Submitted Mac and the iPad: History Repeats Itself as a story · 110 points
HN discussionassuming you're referring to https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html , I find this dubious for a number of reasons and would like to see Tog's methods and data. for example if I want to cycle through undo, I can hold down command and hit Z and shift-Z as many times as I want, as quickly as my fingers can press the keys. acquiring the menu item for this over and over would get tiresome quickly. similarly…
Comment linking /TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
on “Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery”Submitted The Third User (2013) as a story · 88 points
HN discussionThis same conclusion has been actually observed practically verbatim about the keyboard vs. mouse https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html from the post: - Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. - The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
Comment linking /TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
on “Measuring the impact of AI on experienced open-source developer productivity”Submitted Keyboard vs. The Mouse, Part 1 (1989) as a story · 70 points
HN discussionIt's been almost 25 years since Mac OS X launched, when Tog (Apple's first Interaction Designer and only Human Interface Evangelist), lamented that "it makes for a great demo, but not a great product." https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html
Comment linking /columns/044top10docksucks.html
on “Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26”Submitted Magic and Software Design (1993) as a story · 62 points
HN discussion1. Yes, but professional in usability have deemed Apple aesthetics as flat[1] i.e. good for beginners but not for power users/professionals. This might seem strawmany but if you design your UI for flatland, there is a good chance your hardware is designed to be flatland as well. I assume that GP meant professionals as power users or the top percent of Apple's audience. 2. They have failed to solve a rather serious p…
Comment linking /columns/075AppleFlatlandPart1.html
on “Apple - Think Twice”Submitted Intuitive Equals Familiar (1994) as a story · 44 points
HN discussionI see people (legitimately) complaining about the longstanding lack of support for Mac OS native widgets but personnally I'm equally annoyed with the new behavior of menus. The standard of basically every OS is that hovering the pointer over an item opens a submenu (if there's one). In Firefox, I have to click, for instance to open "Help" in the burger menu. The sub-menu then appears by replacing the parent, instead…
Comment linking /columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
on “The Firefox UI Is Now Built with Web Components”Submitted The Complexity Paradox (1998) as a story · 43 points
HN discussionhttp://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html
Comment linking /papers/raskinintuit.html
on “iPhone SE”Submitted Why the New Google News Sucks as a story · 39 points
HN discussionEdward Tufte made a great case that data visualization could have prevented the launch... and that PowerPoint was to blame. https://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html
Comment linking /books/challengerExerpt.html
on “Remembering Roger Boisjoly: He Tried to Stop Shuttle Challenger Launch”Submitted The Third User or Why Apple Keeps Doing Foolish Things (2013) as a story · 32 points
HN discussionThat may be your opinion. But 30 years of HCI research and recommendations on the subject say otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(computer_interface)#Asse... https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/ https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/
Comment linking /atc/principles-of-interaction-design/
on “Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok”Submitted A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts as a story · 28 points
HN discussionhttps://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/ https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/
Comment linking /atc/principles-of-interaction-design/
on “Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok”Submitted How to Achieve Painless Registration as a story · 21 points
HN discussionCan't help but quote: «ng the first Jobsian era at Apple, I used to joke that Steve Jobs cared deeply about Apple customers from the moment they first considered purchasing an Apple computer right up until the time their check cleared the bank. Of course, in later years, the check was replace by a credit card, and check clearance was replaced by the 15-day return period, but Steve’s and Apple’s focus remained the sa…
Comment linking /atc/the-third-user/
on “Apple's products are getting harder to use, ignore principles of design (2015)”Submitted Fitts' Law: A Usability Quiz as a story · 15 points
HN discussionHere's a good article about this law, with many examples: http://asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
Comment linking /columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
on “Laws of UX”Submitted When Interfaces Kill: What Really Happened to John Denver as a story · 14 points
HN discussionAs it turns out, there were in fact engineers who recognized that the O rings were eroding and that this was dangerous. They even tried to communicate this fact to the people with launch cancelling authority. But they weren’t able to communicate it effectively enough to prevent the launch. Apparently, all of the engineers knew intuitively that the problem was real and critical, but weren’t able to communicate it to…
Comment linking /books/challengerExerpt.html
on “U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas”Submitted Keyboard vs. the Mouse pt. 3 as a story · 13 points
HN discussion
