Understand if user needs an undo and redo button always visible on the UI

Question

So we have an app where users can undo or redo their changes using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Shift + Z. There is no button available on the UI for them to do this. Only the keyboard shortcut.

What we need to know is if the users are having trouble undo-ing and redo-ing their work. The app has been live for awhile now and so far none of the users have complained about not being able to undo/redo an action.

From our tracking data, we can only tell how many times the shortcut keys have been used and the number of total sessions during a time period. The number of times the shortcut keys are used is low.

What I want to ask is, what data do I need and how do I analyze if:

1. Users are able to undo/redo their actions when they need to
2. Users are unable undo/redo and just go on because they think it's not a feature
3. The low number of the shortcut key usage is because users don't use undo/redo that frequently.
4. The low number of shortcut key usage is because they don't know undo/redo is there.

Answer 1

Maybe this is not an answer and maybe it doesn't apply to your application, also you don't clarify if it's a desktop or mobile application. When there are shortcuts I guess is a desktop app.

I only tell my experience about the existence or not of buttons.

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QuarkXPress is a text editing program that in its first versions the most important options were achieved through keyboard shortcuts. Many of them had their corresponding option on the menu and others did not. At that time I wondered what was the need to have the menu option repeated when the keyboard shortcut already existed: more comfortable, more immediate, more user friendly. Especially in editorial design, whose speed of execution requires the use of both hands to accelerate the process.

Until one day I had to teach how to use QuarkXPress to a large group of students with paraplegia in a hospital training center. No keyboard shortcut made sense, they were all totally useless.

The user with mobility impairment has a special mouse, a hemisphere that allows him/her to move around the screen and the click options are through pressing the sphere.

It was a nightmare for me to reinterpret a whole very complicated application with all its menu options and tool buttons. But nothing compared to these students and anyone who needs to activate an option with some motor impairment, specially when it doesn't exist.

Perhaps in the analysis list you should include people who cannot use keyboard shortcuts, which is also a numerous market knowing their life is quite sedentary.