Abstract
Despite their mainstream availability, mobile devices do not support a unified yet efficient command selection mechanism available on every platform and application. We advocate that hotkeys, conventionally used as a shortcut mechanism on desktop computers, could be generalised as a command selection mechanism for touch-based mobile devices, even for scenarios where the soft keyboard is not immediately visi ble. In this thesis, we capitalise on the consistent keyboard layout to offer a unified command selection mechanism suitable for both novice and expert users. We intro duce this approach under the name SoftCuts which is an abbreviation for soft keyboard shortcuts. We conducted seven studies across five different projects to investigate the qualitative and quantitative benefits of SoftCuts. Our results show that SoftCuts could leverage users’ prior knowledge of hotkeys and offer a competitive advantage in selec tion performance and learnability, which are essential elements in maximising usability for a user interface