Re: [Usability] Category Management (i.e. Rhythmbox Music Player)

["Jasir Alavi" <jasiralavi gmail com>]

better idea would be to have an option categorize

1. by album, alphabetically
2. by album and number of items

1. by artist, alphabetically
2. by artist and number of items

so that all categories with fewer items can be show at the bottom.
and still give the user to set it alphabetically.

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 2:30 AM, Jacob Beauregard <jake13jake comcast net> wrote:

Alright, so the clearest example of problems in regards to category management is in Rhythmbox, where songs are categorized by Album and Artist.

I'll precede this by saying, effective categorization requires the minimization of the number of categories that contain  very few items without browsing becoming increasingly difficult.

For instance, one doesn't categorize books solely by name in a library.

With that said, there is a problem with the categorization method that Rhythmbox uses. When one categorizes by Artist, and a large number of artists have few unique tracks, it no longer proves an effective method of categorization. The same could be said for Albums that are singles or have very few tracks.

This makes browsing extremely difficult; most users will thus default to using the search bar. However, browsing is just as important as filtering due to the factor of greater visibility. It's just like using an aggregator vs. using a search engine. They both serve their purposes, and one should be able to use either effectively.

I would propose for _any_ kind of populated categorization first to require that an expandable "Other" category be used if one, the category lists a number of items that falls below a particular number of standard deviations from the mean number of items per categorization; and two, the items within the categories that meet this condition can be populated as a whole to be within the particular number of standard deviations.

Would this be a good idea?
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