Recently I got a feedback on a form, sent by a heavy-user using the specific form many times a day. His request was simple, yet I've never thought about that before. He was asking if we could be kind and helpful to reorder some of the input input elements in the form, so items that require the keyboard would be in one group while items that need only the mouse, such as check boxes and radio buttons, would be separately grouped on their own. This would allow him easier and quicker fill of the form, he said.
(One can argue that the easiest and quickest way to fill a form is by using only the keyboard. But it appears that this user, as probably many others, is good with the TAB key to move between elements, but he is not aware or not keen of using the arrow keys for navigating between radio buttons and space bar for checking or unchecking a check box).
In order not to break the natural order of things (keeping first name first, and gender male/female reasonably up in the form) the grouping should be done in areas of the form, which comes to my new practical note to be phrased as:
Try to avoid too many switches of keyboard input elements to mouse input elements, if those can be naturally ordered into reasonable sub-groups to avoid the switch. This would allow a more rapid fill of the form.
