Re: [Usability] New Paradigm of Computing for GNOME 3.0

[Allan <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi Allan (Caeg),

Thanks for starting this discussion.

<snip>
> I stumbled upon Matt Asay's article named The application is the new operating system http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10448883-16.html .
</snip>

<snip>
> I read this idea on the iPad HIG. It doesn't show the filesystem and it's implied that a person can access selected files by opening a certain application. This way, the user flow on the computer would be more similar to the real world. You go to your office suite to open your work-related documents. It's like going to your bedroom to sleep. The user flow of opening a file explorer to locate a file and open it with a certain application isn't as close to people's mental model.
</snip>

There are a few important points in the article. I'd like to focus on
the idea of accessing files through apps instead of a file manager.

The idea of reducing the need for users to use the file manager is a
good one. There are lots of reasons why; too many to list here. The
main reason, though, is that file managers can't accomodate many of
the needs of users, like browsing their music by author, viewing their
photos that were taken in a particular month, or organising their
documents by non-exclusive categories.

What is interesting is how much file manager usage has aleady been
replaced. Most users don't interact with their music files or their
photos using a file manager. They use a media player or a photo
organiser. There's no need for users to open /home/<user>/Music in
their file browser. They open Rhythmbox or Banshee instead, and most
users have a better experience by doing so.

What I disagree with is the suggestion that files should only be
accessible from the app which is used to view/edit them. That might
work for phones or tablets, but it isn't going to work for laptops and
desktops. Why? Because for certain kinds of tasks (usually carried out
with laptops and desktops), it is necessary to work with a range of
different types of file. Additionally (and relatedly), organising,
combining and reorganising different kinds of files is a use case in
itself. If I start a new software design project, I might want to pull
together a range of documents: images, notes, pdfs, odts, and so on.
This 'pulling together' is an important part of many kinds of creative
(in the broad sense) practice.

What I'm getting at is this: GNOME needs a document manager. We have
photo organisers for photos and music apps for music, but there's
nothing for 'documents' (by which I mean anything that people tend to
keep in /home/<user>/Documents). This isn't a new idea. Paperbox [1]
was a good first run at the problem, but we need something more
elaborate. I can think of a few necessary features:

 * metadata extraction and editing
 * organisation of documents by non-exclusive categories
('collections' or 'projects', perhaps?) and tags
 * integration with open and save as dialogs
 * really good search
 * browsing and exploration by metadata ('show me all the articles I
have by the author of document X')
 * versioning

Apologies for the long post...

Allan (Day)

[1] http://live.gnome.org/PaperBox