Need to assign keyboard shortcuts to open applications!

From the Mac Help text for "Creating global keyboard shortcuts"

"Note: You can create keyboard shortcuts only for existing menu commands. You cannot define keyboard shortcuts for general purpose tasks such as opening an application or switching between applications."

It's a bit confusing, but you cannot assign a keyboard short-cut to launch an app. That window is for assigning a keyboard shortcut to an EXISTING menu command in the app you selected, if that menu command does not have a keyboard shortcut already.

So if you select System Preference as the app, and enter Menu Title of "About System Preferences" and enter Opt-Cmd-A as the shortcut, once you close and reopen System Preferences, Opt-Cmd-A will open the About System Preferences window, which is an existing command under the File menu that previously did not have a keyboard shortcut.

You may be able to do what you want with a macro program like Quickeys.

The Keyboard Shortcuts preference is asking for the name of the menu item for the shortcut - as mentioned before (and in the help) you can't add a keyboard shortcut to start an application, just a shortcut for one of the menu items. There are other ways to simplify the selection of an application, such as folder alias on the dock.

Maybe there a misunderstanding here... You can't do that using the built-in Keyboard Shortcuts feature; it is for adding or modifying keyboard shortcuts for existing menu commands INSIDE applications. It is not for opening applications.

Once your apps are open, don't close them. Once running, you can use the Command-Tab keystroke. The application switcher will pop up and each Tab will go to the next app in the row.

I just launch apps with the Spotlight keyboard shortcut. You don't have to type the whole app name.