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.
4 comments:
How about this-- a hypothetical Windows 7 or MacOS "dock" where each icon was its own folder? It'd be "accessible from all sides" (always at the bottom of your screen) but with some spatial permanence and top-level accessibility (drag-n-drop in/out of the folder, etc.)
Hmm...it looks like you can actually do that in Mac OS X at least (put folders in the dock and drag things to them). You could set it up to match the customizable sidebar folders that show up in the Finder and when you try to save something. I think you're right, that does fulfill the "accessible from all sides" criteria. You can then update them to match the current things you are working on.
So here's another thing I wonder: how does the amount of "accessible from all sides" space possible in the real world compare to that possible on a screen? In other words, how many folders in a dock is too many, and how many physical bins is too many? This could be defined as how much you can keep track of mentally, how many you can easily find visually, and/or how many can fit in the space. I'm sure there are some design principles out there that answer this, but I don't know where to find them. Is there a handbook, similar to what engineers use for human ergonomics?
That'd be an interface design book, and I'm sure it exists (a quick read of The Design of Everyday Things is simply amazing!) but I'm not sure there's a rule for how many "buckets" one could optimally keep track of at once. My guess would be 7 (the number of discrete pieces of info people can typically hold in short term memory.) This could be extended by having a catchall folder for unused folders, or by allowing the dock to expand/scroll to access additional folders at the top level.
Alternatively, the number could be based on the number of list elements the eye/brain can organize, which I would guess to be about 14.
Color-coding or meaningful icons (preview thumbnails?) can assist in making this more bearable/accessible.
I have a different book by that author, I'll have to find this one!
Those rules about how much you can hold in short-term memory are just the type of thing I was looking for.
However, I'm thinking of how many physical places I put things that are instantly findable, and it's wayyyy more than 7 or 14. There are multiple cabinets and shelves with individual drawers inside, and several drawer organizers with dozens of little drawers each. I remember the location of any item I need spatially and they're all a step or an arm's reach away. And here's where I think physical-world metaphors might actually help in the virtual world, at least the way I remember things. Not just individual icons, but a context anchoring the location of each item and collections of items.
The other thing that you can do in the real world and not on a screen is that you have physical space to hold things (computers give you "unlimited" virtual space, but much less visual space). I love the detail in the Microsoft Courier mockups that you can place something in the "spine" of the book while you navigate to a different place (a visual copy-and-paste operation). This ability to hold something in a different place while not losing track of it visually is huge, and currently missing from computer interfaces in my opinion.
Still not sure if I'm actually touching on something new here, but it's fun to think about.
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