C+S: Improving user through put of online forms

Imagine you are a person who works in a call center or similar job. All day
long you answer the phone and process customer orders by filling in some
kind of online form. You might work for a PC manufacturer like Dell or HP,
you might work for a clothing company like LL Bean, or even an airline or
hotel. The point is, your job requires you to "live" in these online forms
all day long. You are an expert at using them, and doing it quickly without
errors is a huge part of your work.

My question: Has anything been done for this type of user to help improve
their throughput and reduce error rates? Are there techniques that can be
used to help accelerate their work? I am aware of two techniques - keyboard
accelerators and type ahead fill-ins. Keyboard accelerators allow the user
to type some magic combination of keys, such as Shift + F9, that either
quickly navigates them to some section of the form, or generates some kind
of text output into the form. Type ahead fill-ins allow the user to type in
a few letters and the system tries to match these letters to list of
choices. A good example would be choosing a US State from a list of states.

I am wondering if there are other techniques either in the literature or
from your personal experience?

If people will respond to me, I will create a summary response and post it
to the group.

Thank you.

Best regards,
Matt Belge
Vision & Logic
[email protected]

    --------------------------------------------------------------
        Tip of the Day: Forward out-of-office replies to
                    mailto:[email protected]
     CHI-WEB: www.sigchi.org/web POSTINGS: mailto:[email protected]
              MODERATORS: mailto:[email protected]
       SUBSCRIPTION CHANGES & FAQ:  www.sigchi.org/web/faq.html
    --------------------------------------------------------------