Re: [Usability] User problems and practices with modern desktop systems

[Lutz Mueller <lutz familieMuellerInRemscheid de>]

Hi Sean,

your email reflects a lot of what I'm thinking about a while.
I wasn't shure if this list is the right place for this ideas. And 
please forgive me my english :)


> Some interesting observations made by the researchers on 
> classification:
> 4.1 Observed Classification Practices
> "Archiving: To all of our users, archiving was decidedly an important 
> matter.  For this reason, a fair amount of effort was invested, both 
> in creating elaborate file system structures and in labelling them 
> adequately.... Proper classification was perceived as difficult: In 
> our study the users expended considerable cognitive effort with regard 
> to the classification of documents, and the labelling of folders and 
> documents."
>
> I think the point here is that it takes a fair amount of work to 
> classify all of your user documents.  I don't know if there is a good 
> solution to this though, as I don't really agree with the idea of  
> using metadata. and dumping everything to one directory.


In my opinion folder are a very simple kind of information metadata.
i believe the metapher of folder doesn't work propper. How do i 
organize my data? in projects, or what kind of work 
(home|office|external|inter|sport etc.), or like the structure given by 
osx in type (pictures|documents etc)

We don't have to stick on old metaphers whatever it cost anymore. the 
world in computers is an other than world than in real life. For 
example I don't have gimmicks in a folder in an other folder and so on.
May it be more helpfull to show the user that things in a computer are 
not limited as things in the real world?


So I would like to have something like a mind mapping strukture: data 
xy is in relation to job x, projekt y done at June04 and so on. 
Additional with relations to the mimetype or possible applications. 
These mapping may be created by hand and by the system. By hand maybe 
with arrows to icons representing the projects or with popup menues. 
The system may generate links when I create a document by reusing an 
older one, or because I copy 'n paste content.

the data are stored in kind of relational database and the links are 
m:n relations to other objects.
searching will be a matter of selecting the patterns the data belongs 
to.
A folder named "job application" will now be an icon opening a window 
with all data mapped to it. selecting an application shows the 
intersection.

I hope some of you agree and this idea may develop the gnome "desktop".
Lutz

____
Lutz Mueller
Bergische Universität Wuppertal / Industrial Design
V-Card:       http://familiemuellerinremscheid.de/mueller.vcf
GNU-PGP Key:  http://familiemuellerinremscheid.de/mueller.gpg