File Parking Spots
12:22 AM Edit This 4 Comments »
My computer's desktop gets messy fast, it seems to be where I save everything.
Every now and then I will strive to get organized and create a file hierarchy with the "a place for everything" philosophy.
Unfortunately, it's harder to get things in their places when I have to navigate through three or more levels of folders each time I want to save or open something. It's not the number of clicks, it's the memory access time (mine, not the computer's!) to remember the name of where I kept something that is painful.
My solution to this in the physical world (the way I organize my room) is to keep everything in drawers, pockets, and boxes with open tops to make it as quick as possible to put something back where it needs to go. Avoid any kind of boxes-within-boxes that make me have to stop and think and manually open each one and close it again and put it away. I also have this great shelving unit (IKEA Expedit) with open cubes that make it possible to access things from both sides.
Is this metaphor even applicable? What is the digital equivalent of accessing something fast from any "side" and of having "open boxes" in which to place things?
My current approach, which I'm not yet fully happy with, is ordering directory hierarchies so that most often accessed locations are the easiest to access. For instance, courses are organized like this:
Courses -> Current Course 1, Current Course 2, Current Course n, "Older than Fall 2009"
The "Older than Fall 2009" folder holds: Course 1, Course 2, Course 3, "Older than Spring 2009"
etc.
Things still end up on the desktop.
Another idea is that I know I have a very spatial memory--that's why the boxes in my room work, I remember where they are and can reach for them without thinking. There's this (information science?) idea of names or IDs being fixed, while the labeled thing can move around freely in space. What if relative locations were fixed and names didn't matter? If I could think of a way to keep files in locations I associated with their contents, that would help significantly. My desktop could be a world map with dots where the files were. I could zoom in, and as I zoomed in I would be able to, say, zoom into a building where I had a class and all the notes and papers from that class would be sitting on a photo of the classroom. (I tend to remember where I had a class and where I sat better even than who the teacher was).
Combine geotagging of photos and documents (computer with GPS remembers where a document was written) and a little user guidance and this could be generated partly automatically.
Hmm. I could probably write this, but it wouldn't be reflected in the save file dialog from applications, which are fairly text-based and a significant part of the clutter problem. I still like it! It could even be an "augmented reality" application on a mobile phone: as you walk into a space, your related documents and files and emails are floating around there.
Every now and then I will strive to get organized and create a file hierarchy with the "a place for everything" philosophy.
Unfortunately, it's harder to get things in their places when I have to navigate through three or more levels of folders each time I want to save or open something. It's not the number of clicks, it's the memory access time (mine, not the computer's!) to remember the name of where I kept something that is painful.
My solution to this in the physical world (the way I organize my room) is to keep everything in drawers, pockets, and boxes with open tops to make it as quick as possible to put something back where it needs to go. Avoid any kind of boxes-within-boxes that make me have to stop and think and manually open each one and close it again and put it away. I also have this great shelving unit (IKEA Expedit) with open cubes that make it possible to access things from both sides.
Is this metaphor even applicable? What is the digital equivalent of accessing something fast from any "side" and of having "open boxes" in which to place things?
My current approach, which I'm not yet fully happy with, is ordering directory hierarchies so that most often accessed locations are the easiest to access. For instance, courses are organized like this:
Courses -> Current Course 1, Current Course 2, Current Course n, "Older than Fall 2009"
The "Older than Fall 2009" folder holds: Course 1, Course 2, Course 3, "Older than Spring 2009"
etc.
Things still end up on the desktop.
Another idea is that I know I have a very spatial memory--that's why the boxes in my room work, I remember where they are and can reach for them without thinking. There's this (information science?) idea of names or IDs being fixed, while the labeled thing can move around freely in space. What if relative locations were fixed and names didn't matter? If I could think of a way to keep files in locations I associated with their contents, that would help significantly. My desktop could be a world map with dots where the files were. I could zoom in, and as I zoomed in I would be able to, say, zoom into a building where I had a class and all the notes and papers from that class would be sitting on a photo of the classroom. (I tend to remember where I had a class and where I sat better even than who the teacher was).
Combine geotagging of photos and documents (computer with GPS remembers where a document was written) and a little user guidance and this could be generated partly automatically.
Hmm. I could probably write this, but it wouldn't be reflected in the save file dialog from applications, which are fairly text-based and a significant part of the clutter problem. I still like it! It could even be an "augmented reality" application on a mobile phone: as you walk into a space, your related documents and files and emails are floating around there.