Revealing the Copy and Paste Habits of End Users

Transferring data across applications is a common end user task, and copying and pasting via the clipboard lets users do so relatively easily. Using the clipboard, however, can also introduce inefficiencies and errors in user tasks. To help researchers and tool developers understand and address these problems, we studied how end users interact with the clipboard through cut, copy, and paste actions. This study was performed by logging clipboard interactions while end users performed everyday tasks. From the clipboard usage data, we have identified several usage patterns that describe how data is transferred within the desktop environment. Such patterns help us understand end user behavior and indicate areas in which clipboard support tools can be improved.