KeyMap: Improving Keyboard Shortcut Vocabulary Using Norman's Mapping

Blaine Lewis, Greg d'Eon, Andy Cockburn, Daniel Vogel

Abstract: We introduce a new shortcut interface called KeyMap that is designed to leverage Norman's principle of natural mapping. Rather than displaying shortcut command labels in linear menus, KeyMap displays a virtual keyboard with command labels displayed directly on its keys. A crowdsourced experiment compares KeyMap to Malacria et al.'s ExposeHK using an extension of their protocol to also test recall. Results show KeyMap users remembered 1 more shortcut than ExposeHK immediately after training, and this advantage increased to 4.5 more shortcuts when tested again after 24 hours. KeyMap users also incidentally learned more shortcuts that they had never practised. We demonstrate how KeyMap can be added to existing web-based applications using a Chrome extension.