I think this fits in this channel: 1) What applications do you use that use drag and drop in an interesting way? 2) same question but web apps 3) same question but on mobile native 4) same but on mobile web 5) for mobile native but touch gestures 6) same as 5 but for mobile web

May not count as interesting, but to be completely honest: (1) dragging images from browser to desktop mostly – yes, any authoring tool uses drags, but I'm in code more often. (2) Drop a photo to share it. (3) Reordering podcasts in Overcast. (4) Never. (5) Switching apps/context. Dismissing notifications. (6) Never.

Err... aside from dragging files around, or shapes on a diagram, the only thing I can think of is that FB Messenger chat bubble on my phone. While others flick it out of existence immediately, I often drag it out of my way but leave it on the screen... I kinda like having my contacts sitting there in the bubble.

Might speak to interfaces being less spacial these days.

When working at my laptop, I try to avoid Drag and Drop because it's weird to perform with a touchpad. A simple button or keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V are simpler / more flexible IMO. On the other hand, Drag and Drop is a good physical metaphor that makes it easier to learn for beginners.

Things (to do list management) on iOS has a plus button to add new tasks you can drag anywhere to create a new task right there. Or if you drag it into the lower right corner it will be created in you inbox. It also is context-aware and creates a new project, if you drag it into the project list on the left on iPad. The video on their website shows all that: https://culturedcode.com/things/ Are you looking for drag and drop specifically, or more generally gestures? For gestural interaction I'd encourage you to watch this, even if you don’t use/like/care about Apple: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/803/

I get the feeling almost nobody uses nothing more than click and double click, most of the drag and drop usage is from OS apps, or the file manager, or standard ui elements (reoder tabs)

Yep. Good gestures are a productivity shortcut. Just like keyboard shortcuts. You’ll have to discover and learn them, but then they can make you more productive. Keyboard shortcuts are a little easier to discover (menu bar in macOS), but harder to learn. Good gestures feel natural and are easier to learn, but harder to discover, because you can’t just summarize them with a few symbols. Hmm… maybe you can.

Is there any actual data that gestures are easier to learn? There are 1000s of keyboard shortcuts, lots in each app. I know 10s of gestures.

Only games seem to understand the importance of practice to mastery. It's not just knowing that there is a gesture/shortcut, it's making it second nature. Why just the other day I "rediscovered" that I can add Omnifocus todo items with "hey Siri" simply because I had gotten out of the habit. The most shocking was a time I was sitting next to an analyst facing an Excel sheet when he reached for the four function calculator next to him on the desk.

You’re right, @gman, I don’t know if there's hard data about what’s easier to learn, gestures or keyboard shortcuts. I was basing my assumption on gestures being more aligned with some of the metaphorical structures we use in natural language (e.g. “stock market is up”, “up” is metaphorically structured to mean “more” or “positive”; that's hopelessly oversimplified, see Lakoff's work for details). Gestures can have direction and physicality (also talked about in the video I linked to above). This I believe to encourage intuitive understanding, because it is tapping into some very deeply embedded metaphors that we use all the time in language and which are based on how we interact with the world (think of how much in language is structured with e.g. spatial direction, “stock market up”, “feeling down”, “going back in time”, “moving forward with a decision”, etc.). However, how well that works, might also be dependent on how we acquire that skill, much like language itself. I have spend almost seven years officially (and many more before and after that) in that world of Apple's user interface design and experience principles, and for me a lot of these gestures just make sense on a very intuitive level with not much cognitive effort involved. I find it much harder to memorize the right chords of keys to press for more advanced keyboard shortcuts. The ones I do use all the time, are “muscle memory”, as in I wouldn’t be able to tell you the keys without watching my fingers — and isn’t that also a gesture? So from that I was following that gestures are on a somewhat lower level, where there is less cognitive effort involved. Of course, assuming that the metaphors used for gestures are aligned with metaphors we use in natural language, for which pinch-to-zoom seems to be an excellent example for instance.