[IAEP] Article on "Why files need to die"

[Dave Bauer]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 9:01 AM, John Watlington <wad at laptop.org> wrote:
>
>> When OS X starts up with a search box open
>> instead of a blank desktop we'll know we are there :)
>
> What a nightmare !    I'm sorry, but once you move past trivial amounts
> of information, correctly specifying the search or filtering through
> the results of a loosely specified search takes forever.   My laptop has
> over a half-million files on it, with only a small fraction of my
> photos/music/movie collection and no files older than five years old on it.
>
> I use iMail and Spotlight as much as the next Mac user, but finding the
> right mail from (who was that ?) on (what month/year was that ?) about
> a common topic can be very frustrating.    Whereas the spatial localization
> paradigm works wonderfully for me (perhaps as it is how I find things in
> the physical world ?)    If I want to find something again, I put it in a
> certain place in my desktop/hierarchical file system/office/home.
>

I can understand that. What if you forgot where you put it last year?
I either don't remember where/how I filed something, or I specifically
didn't think about it, because I knew I could search for it later.  I
remeber instead, the keywords I can use to bring something back up in
a search. Maybe it's functionally equivlant, we should get MRIs to
find out :)

More relevant, has anyone studied how typical users manage a
hierarchal filesystem? Do they put everything straight into My
Documents? I don't have a large sample size to compare. There
definitely is a spectrum of users. Casual home users who mainly use
email and the internet along with downloading photos or videos from
their camera. Small office users, corporate users with a WAN, users
without persistent internet etc.

I am sure someone has, but I haven't ever looked for this type of
literature beyond reading a couple of books on web site usability
years ago.

Dave

>> For me, I think these ideas, plus new ones we haven't thought of,
>> combined with refined user interfaces developd based on user behaviors
>> are the future. The more the computer can predict what you want, the
>> more it can help you get your work done. You just have to give it a
>> hint.
>
> Secretaries and personal assistants have done this for years, but I
> don't believe that AI is up to the challenge yet.
> Of course, this doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve the current UIs...
>
> Cheers,
> wad
>
>



-- 
Dave Bauer
dave at solutiongrove.com
http://www.solutiongrove.com