Being easy to use and easy to learn are not necessarily the same thing. GUI's are generally easier to learn, but not necessarily the most productive once a typical user reaches the plateau of the learning curve. A UI designed to minimize hand and eye movements may have a longer learning curve than a GUI. The ideal solution may thus depend on staff turnover rate.
I think you'd be surprised how quickly people can pick up on an interface that is as simple as the kinds of TUIs we're talking about. These kinds of things were very common for all sorts of tasks throughout the late 80s and early 90s and I don't think I've ever heard of the learning curve being a problem.
How to look up unsold inventory on the system at the first job I worked in 1999.
There people there who could navigate 5 screens without looking until the system returned the result they wanted.
People are smarter than many give them credit, the computing revolution in business really started taking off in an era when computers booted to something like.
C:\>
I’m not suggesting we throw out guis but we could do much better in some areas.
