[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Article on "Why files need to die"

[Alexandro Colorado]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 8:12 AM, Dave Bauer <dave at solutiongrove.com> wrote:

> 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 know there might be places that I dont want anyone to wonder off, so I
have it pretty deep in my filestructure not to popup just randomly. Having a
search based paradigm will also present a risk just like google searching
for the wrong "Swedish Girls" semantics in Google Images.


>
> 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.
>

Most users use the desktop to store everything and I mean everything.
Reminds me of an episode of the Website is down up in youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_Kfjo3VjU&t=7m54s (NSFW!)


> > 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
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>



-- 
*Alexandro Colorado*
*OpenOffice.org* Español
http://es.openoffice.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20110715/6b590607/attachment.html>