Designing Keyboard Shortcuts That Stick

A shortcut no one remembers is dead weight

Shortcuts exist to make frequent actions fast for people who use them often. But a shortcut only delivers that benefit if the person recalls it at the moment they need it, and recall is where most shortcut schemes fail. A product can define dozens of shortcuts, but if they are arbitrary or undiscoverable, almost none get learned, and the feature is effort spent for little return.

Designing shortcuts that stick is therefore mostly about memorability and discoverability, not about covering every action. A handful of well-chosen, memorable shortcuts for the most frequent actions is worth more than an exhaustive map that no one internalizes.

Convention, mnemonics, consistency

Three things make a shortcut memorable. Following platform conventions means people who already know the platform arrive knowing your shortcuts, because the common ones for actions like copy and save are the same everywhere. Mnemonic mappings connect the key to the action, so the key for a search action relating to its initial letter is easier to recall than an arbitrary assignment. And consistency within the product means the same shortcut does the same kind of thing everywhere, so learning one place teaches the others.

• Follow established platform conventions so existing knowledge transfers.
• Choose mnemonic mappings that connect the key to the action.
• Keep shortcuts consistent across the product so learning compounds.

Make shortcuts discoverable in place

People cannot learn shortcuts they never see. Surfacing the shortcut next to its action, in menus and tooltips where the person already is, lets them absorb it in the natural course of use rather than memorizing a separate reference. The most effective discovery happens at the moment the person performs the action with a pointer, when seeing the shortcut suggests a faster way to do what they just did.