There is no universal speed winner. A toolbar click was fastest in one command-selection study; keyboard shortcuts improved most with practice, and practiced stroke gestures beat shortcuts in one specific command task. By contrast, free-space Kinect gestures performed poorly for selecting targets in a small preliminary study. The result depends on what you are doing, which kind of gesture you mean, and how often you have practiced.
What counts as a “mouse gesture”?
The term covers different ways of interacting, and their results should not be treated as interchangeable:
- Toolbar or menu selection: pointing to a visible control or navigating a menu. These are mouse actions, but not usually called gestures.
- Stroke gesture shortcut: drawing a learned path to invoke a command.
- Touchpad gesture: using a swipe or other movement recognized by a touch surface.
- Free-space gesture: moving in front of a camera or sensor, such as Kinect, to control an interface.
A quick, visible toolbar target is a different task from recalling a shortcut or asking a sensor to recognize a movement. Which method is faster depends partly on that distinction.
What the studies found
| Study and task | Finding | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Omanson, Miller, Young, and Schwantes (2010): mouse menus, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse toolbar selection | Participants completed 90 trials. The authors report that toolbar-mouse selection was fastest overall, while menu-keyboard selection improved most. They also say shortcuts can be as efficient as toolbars in heavily used interfaces. Study record | This compares particular command-selection methods, not every task. The abstract does not give exact completion times. |
| “With practice, keyboard shortcuts become faster than menu selection: A crossover interaction” (2015) | The reported crossover occurred after approximately 200 responses in that experiment. After training, all but one participant in the shortcut-trained group chose to continue using shortcuts. PubMed record | The response count is specific to this experiment; it is not a universal shortcut-learning threshold. |
| Appert and Zhai experiment as summarized by Zhai et al. (2012): stroke gestures versus keyboard shortcuts for commands | Stroke gestures were significantly faster and had fewer errors in the tested command task, particularly with moderate practice. At least one error occurred in 19% of gesture trials and 22% of keyboard trials. Chapter record | These error figures describe one experiment, not typical rates across software or users. |
| Sambrooks and Wilkinson (2013): mouse, touch, and Kinect-based free-space gestures for target selection | In a preliminary experiment, 15 participants selected 100 targets with each technique. The Kinect gesture condition had three times as many miss-selections as the other tested approaches. Touch was comparable to mouse overall but struggled with smaller targets. Paper record | The authors attributed gesture performance to unfamiliarity and sensor inaccuracies. This finding is about that setup, not all gesture interfaces. |
Why speed changes with the task and practice
Visible controls favor direct selection
If a command is already visible and easy to reach, clicking it may be quicker than remembering a shortcut or navigating a menu. The 2010 study found toolbar selection fastest overall among its tested methods. That does not establish toolbar clicks as fastest for every application or command.
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Repeated commands can reward memorization
A shortcut may take longer when you are searching for it or learning it. Once you recall it reliably, it can avoid menu navigation and become efficient for frequently repeated commands. In the 2015/2016 experiment, the crossover after roughly 200 responses applied to its participants and procedure, not to every person’s learning curve.
Gestures depend on what is being recognized
A practiced stroke used to trigger a command is not the same as selecting a small target with an in-air motion sensor. The stroke-gesture experiment favored gestures for its command task, while the Kinect experiment found more missed selections. Neither result predicts the performance of every touchpad, camera, or application-specific gesture.
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How to find the faster method for your own workflow
Compare methods on actions you actually repeat, rather than relying on a general ranking.
- Choose three frequent actions. For example, select all, undo, or open a commonly used panel.
- Pick a realistic alternative. Compare your usual method with a shortcut or gesture that the application supports. Check the software’s current help for its exact command and shortcut; assignments vary by application.
- Repeat each method several times. Include enough practice to recall the shortcut or gesture rather than timing only the first attempt.
- Record elapsed time and mistakes. Count missed targets, wrong commands, and retries alongside successful completion time.
- Use the method that works better in context. A small speed advantage may not be worthwhile if the method is easy to forget, unreliable, or unsuitable for the way you work.
Keep keyboard operation available
Speed is not the only design consideration. W3C guidance for WCAG Success Criterion 2.1.1 says functionality should be operable through a keyboard interface, except where the underlying function depends on a movement path. Its examples include relying only on pointing-device-specific handlers, including gestures, as a failure; it also clarifies that keyboard access does not discourage offering mouse input as an additional method. W3C: Understanding Keyboard accessibility
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Microsoft’s Windows design guidance similarly says not to make a shortcut the only way to perform a task. It recommends reserving shortcuts for common commands, documenting them, avoiding conflicting assignments, and using consistent conventions to help users remember them. These are design recommendations, not proof that shortcuts are faster for every user. Microsoft Learn: Keyboard (Win32 apps) · Microsoft Learn: Keyboard interactions (Windows apps)
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