There comes cases where it's quite obvious that users are most likely to copy and paste a value into a given text-box. One of those cases is a URL fields.
This made me thinking of adding a paste button next to the text field, to allow pasting a string from the clipboard right with just a simple click. Although redundant to the right-click + "Paste" and to the Ctrl+V shortcut, it seems to have much more affordance, discoverability, and speed (if you happen to arrive at the form with only the mouse in your hands).
I know I saw some real examples of such a button somewhere, but I can't seem to find them (help would be appreciated here).
Questions
- Do you have any evidence this actually enhances usability?
- If it does, why isn't it more common?
Answer
Yes, this will improve efficiency. For desktop users, it will mean that users who are not yet in position to use the keyboard will be able to proceed without delay (which reduces your GOMS or KLM score). For touch users, it means that the user does not have to rely on the often rather fiddly native text paste controls.
That being said, I am unsure about your current design - paste icons can be ambiguous, so a plain text button might be superior.
As for your second question, there are two reasons this pattern is rarely seen. Firstly, on desktop applications, forms are less common than on the web; and secondly, on the web, copy and pasting is hard for the page to provide because most browsers do not expose the clipboard to JavaScript.
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