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

[Keith Daniel Swenson <kswenito gmail com>]

This is not a "problem" in that one cannot accomplish finding a music 
entry by other means (searching), it is a problem that browsing has 
looses it's Usability. The purpose of browsing is to be able to get an 
overview of what is in the hierarchy and to categorize as Jacob has 
already described. It is not a good overview when over half of the 
categories do not categorize at all (they do not group more than one (or 
a few) song(s) together.)

May I suggest a solution like the Amarok player's treatment of "Various 
Artists:" A track/album may be meta-tagged as various artists so that 
when browsing the whole album can be viewed under one category and so 
that artists with one track on the album do not clutter browsing by 
artist. Of course for better usability this tag is automatically placed, 
but can be added and removed at will by the user.

I think we are talking about a similar concept here, but with "Singles" 
(instead of a non-descriptive "Other" category.) It would function in a 
similar way as the Various Artist treatment above. BOTH these systems 
are crucial to the usability and proper semantics of large-music-library 
browsing.


Kirk Bridger wrote:
> There is obviously a lot of thought behind these comments, but I 
> really am confused as to what the actual use case here is.  What does 
> the user want to do that searching doesn't accomplish?
>
> Sorry to appear so daft, but it feels like I would like to contribute 
> but am just not grasping what the problem and use case are.
>
> Kirk
>
>
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