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



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




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