Curious Case of Ctrl+C,C,C and Ctrl+V
Regardless of being a designer and just as a “computer user” for most of my life, I can’t imagine a single time when I have copied something, only clicking Ctrl + C once.
(As a Windows user, I only can assume Mac’s have a similar problem.)
On a mobile device, when we copy an asset or peice of text, we get a feedback notification indicating that, that action has happened and a process is done. Whereas, on a PC/Laptop, I have found myself having to assume something has been copied. And becuase there is no feedback of the action, user has taken, we tend to atleast do it twice or thrice and hence the habit of Ctrl+C,C,C. Pasting an asset or text in itself is pretty visual indicative and thus, a simple Ctrl+V shows it to you. If it doesn’t then we blame the copy action and repeat the ‘no feedback’ process again.
The whole problem can be fixed with showing one notification of the action completed — “Copied”.
One could ask then, “Why fix something that is running fine?” That is true in a sense. No one is complaning about it, and if left unchanged, there won’t be any effect. A mere 5–10 seconds are spent in those extra clicks.
But that’s what we must do. Discover problems that we have grown used to and solve them. That is something we can solve so why shouldn’t we.
