· · Daniel A
Designing for Keyboard-First Users
How we built SimplyBoard to be blazing fast for developers who live in their terminal.
Watch a developer work, and you'll notice something: their hands rarely leave the keyboard. They navigate with Vim keybindings, switch windows with hotkeys, and reach for the mouse only when absolutely necessary. The mouse isn't slow · it's just an interruption.
When we designed SimplyBoard, we started with a question: what if we optimized for people who think reaching for a mouse is a context switch?
The Slash Mentality
Open SimplyBoard and press /. You're now in search mode. Start typing, and results appear instantly. Press Enter to open the top result. Press Escape to go back.
This isn't revolutionary · it's borrowed from tools developers already love. Vim uses / for search. Slack uses Cmd+K. VS Code, Notion, Linear · they all have some variant of the command palette pattern.
But here's where most tools mess it up: they treat keyboard shortcuts as a power-user feature. A nice-to-have. Something you might discover in the documentation if you really go looking.
We flipped it. SimplyBoard is keyboard-first by default, with mouse support as the fallback. Every shortcut is visible in the UI. Every action has a key binding. You shouldn't need to memorize anything because it's all right there.
Core Shortcuts
No Mode-Switching
One thing that drives me crazy about some apps: you're in the middle of something, you want to search, but first you have to close a modal, or navigate to a different view, or click somewhere specific to get the search bar focused.
In SimplyBoard, pressing / works from anywhere. Writing an entry? Slash. Scrolling through results? Slash. Looking at settings? Slash. The search bar is always one keystroke away.
Same deal with creating new entries. Ctrl+N works from any screen. You don't need to be in a specific place or close what you're doing. Just hit the shortcut and start typing.
Visible Affordances
Here's a dirty secret about keyboard shortcuts: people don't read documentation. I've been using some apps for years and still don't know half their shortcuts because I never bothered to look them up.
So we put them in the UI. Every button that has a shortcut shows the shortcut. The footer reminds you of the basics. When you hover over an action, the tooltip includes the key binding.
This serves two purposes:
- Discovery · you learn shortcuts naturally just by using the app
- Confirmation · you can verify you're about to do the right thing before pressing keys
Design Principle
If an action has a keyboard shortcut, the shortcut should be visible somewhere in the UI. Hidden shortcuts are useless shortcuts.
Speed Is a Feature
All of this is in service of one goal: speed. Not speed for its own sake, but speed because every millisecond of delay is a potential thought interrupted.
When you're in flow, you're holding a lot of context in your head. Variable names, function signatures, the shape of the data you're working with. Reaching for a note should be like reaching for a memory · instant and effortless.
That's why SimplyBoard searches as you type. That's why we cache aggressively. That's why the app is a single-page application with no full-page reloads. Every design decision traces back to the same question: does this make the user faster or slower?
The Goal
From the moment you think "I need that thing I saved" to the moment you're copying it · that should take under 3 seconds. Anything longer means we've failed.
But Also: Mouse Support
Look, we're not zealots. Keyboard-first doesn't mean keyboard-only. Some things are genuinely easier with a mouse · like reorganizing a visual canvas, or selecting a chunk of text to copy.
Everything in SimplyBoard is also clickable. You can use it entirely with a mouse if you want. We just optimized for keyboard because that's what our target users prefer.
The key word is "parity." Mouse users shouldn't feel like second-class citizens. They should have access to every feature, just through a different input method. Keyboard shortcuts are the fast path, not the only path.
Try It
Next time you open SimplyBoard, try not touching your mouse at all. Press / to search. Use arrow keys to navigate results. Press Enter to open. Press Ctrl+C to copy. Press Esc to go back.
It's how the app was meant to be used. And honestly? Once you get used to it, reaching for the mouse starts to feel like going backwards.
· The SimplyBoard Team
