The Desktop & File/Folder Metaphors - Broken
(Click picture to see full-sized)
This is a picture of the desktop of an individual who has given up organizing their files and folders, and instead relies completely on Spotlight to access their files. I’ve said in the past that I think the desktop metaphor is insufficient for managing the stuff we now store on our computing devices. (Thanks to Flickr user danpatmore for the pic.)
I’m currently writing an article on this for UXmatters. (And I’m very late, my profuse apologies Pabini…). I’ll follow up on this line of thinking here when I cap that article.
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March 9th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Heh, great photo. Just looking at it makes me feel anxious though. It reminds me of some of the photos I’ve seen of compulsive hoarding: http://tinyurl.com/36k8d5
Looking forward to seeing the article on UXMatters! You should take a look at the article I wrote for Boxes + Arrows last year, called “Doing Today’s Job with Yesterday’s Tools”: . It talks about the usability problems with the old file/folder metaphor, and makes some suggestions about how things could be improved.
March 9th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Oops, here’s the link: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/doing-todays-job
March 9th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Cool, thanks for the link Patrick! I’ll check out the article today.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
[...] Thank god for Spotlight: A Mac user decides to experiment with saving EVERYTHING to the desktop and relying on Spotlight to find things again. Looks like the computer equivalent of compulsive hording. Hat tip: Paul J. Sherman/Usability Blog [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 10:45 am
@Paul @Patrick Interesting stuff. It makes me wonder what Apple has up its sleeve with future versions of Spotlight, as we become more search driven workers…
March 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
[...] at UsabilityBlog, Paul Sherman is not a huge fan of the desktop metaphor and says computer users need a better way [...]