October 24, 2007
Copy and Paste
If you watch me use a computer for long enough you'll probably note that I'll try not to use Copy and Paste. Especially in instances where I'm pasting in information but don't have visual confirmation of what I've pasted. (e.g. pasting into a password field)
Instead you'll see me going Cut, Paste into the field I just cut from, Paste into the field I need to place the clipping.
The reason I do this is I've run into enough instances where I think I have copied something, but upon pasting it I realize that I haven't actually copied it.
The more and more I think about this the more and more I believe this is a design flaw that has been propagated all over many different operating systems. The key flaw is computers should provide some type of confirmation that they have received a user's input and have acted upon it. (or are unable to act upon it.) As far as I know no OS provides this with their copy functionalities. The feedback doesn't have to be bombastic or very explicit, but it should be there when you want to see it. With copying from text the feedback could be as simple as a sound or perhaps removing the selection on the text that was copied.
I'm not an interface designer, but I've been around computers and trained others on using them long enough that I feel I've got some intelligence about the matter.
The more I play with this in mind the more I think the pain points come because of shitty windows implementations of copy, especially copy on the keyboard.. My Mac doesn't give me anywhere near the grief that windows does.