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I don't know. I think that at a certain point people have to accept that there are just some things must be learned in order to operate a computer. It would be nice if computers could just read the mind of the user, but until then, the user must learn some things about how the computer operates. Folders, I think, is one of those things.

In the end, some knowledge is required. If we remove folders, then that knowledge will change from "What is a folder, and where did I put that file?" to "What is an application, and which one did I use to create that file, and how do I get that file from one application to another?" (Think word processing program to email attachment.)

Either way, the end user has to learn something. We can continue dumbing down concepts and interfaces with the noble goal of making it easier for the people who just don't want to understand how computers work (let's face it, learning basic folder manipulation isn't hard, especially with Google--or a manual or family member, for those who can't even use Google), but there will always be a lazier person, and eventually we'll end up dumbing things down until they become useless.

Maybe the better solution is to have a better "Home" folder concept. I don't know how it is in OSX, but in Windows the home folder is a confusing collection of sample files, folder-spam from other apps, and "library" views that masks the entire concept, but only sometimes. Fixing that mess and making it more like, say, a Linux home folder (/home/acabal/videos/) would be a good starting point without losing the usefulness of folders altogether.

* I think that at a certain point people have to accept that there are just some things must be learned in order to operate a computer.*

That statement encapsulates an ideological outlook.

I, personally, agree with you. (I happen to have a CS degree and used to work in the industry: of course I agree with you!)

However, purely pragmatically, a lot of people don't agree with that position. They no more want to know how their computer works than they want to know how to adjust the ignition timing on their car. Yes, in principle they could learn that stuff; but they consider it to be a waste of their valuable time, for which they have other priorities.

By way of an analogy: we're in the position of 17th century puritans asserting that of course everyone must learn to read so they can read the Bible for themselves and interpret the word of god directly. (While a large chunk of the audience at the time disagreed strongly and wanted to leave that to the priests.)

That's how things are for a large chunk of the general public, whether we want it to be so or not. And as computer use becomes a universal, pervasive element of society, we're going to run up against it increasingly.

I wouldn't compare learning folders to learning car ignition timing. That's more like learning about inodes--something that's interesting but irrelevant to anyone but enthusiasts.

I would instead compare folders to knowing that your car's oil must be changed. (Who doesn't love a car analogy?) You can survive without that knowledge, and you even can pay others to do it. But it's very simple stuff, and at the very, very least, in order to (successfully) own a car you must know that the oil has to be changed every now and then, if not by you then by someone else. It's a matter of fundamental knowledge of the tools you're using.

If you want to live without that knowledge, then it's your own fault really, because it's not hard to learn and every car ever made uses the concept. It's in the manual. If you don't want to learn it, are too lazy to, think it's too hard, or have different priorities, then that's cool--but don't expect car makers to put effort into molding cars to your whims, because it turns out oil is pretty useful in a car.

If a person was born in 1870 and decided to buy a car in 1930, well, it's up to them to learn that cars need their oil changed. Age is not really an excuse, nor is being born to a different generation.

In either case, you're right: the general public will continue to be too uninterested to learn basic computing principles. (And again I mean basic, like files and folders.) But ruining it for the rest of us isn't the way to fix that.

"in order to (successfully) own a car you must know that the oil has to be changed every now and then"

I do not drive a car, but aren't we moving towards "a red blinking light means 'go to the garage within a few weeks'"?

Similarly, "to (successfully) go from A to B you must know how to read a map", "to print a photograph you need to be able to work a dark room", "to make a hole in a wall you need strong muscles", etc.

" But ruining it for the rest of us isn't the way to fix that."

Counterargument: ruining it for the general population is not the way to sell shitloads of hardware.

It's the users own fault? Really? We make products for the users, and they never do anything wrong – and it's never their fault.

Sorry, but the buck has to stop somewhere. For example, if a handful of users can't figure out how to use a mouse, then do we replace all mouses with Wacom tablets because they're so "inelegant" and "unintuitive" to a few people? No, because it turns out they're very useful for most people who get it.

Do they require practice and a certain (very small) amount of domain knowledge? Yes. Is that a bad thing, considering how useful they are? No.

"The user is always right" isn't an ultimate mandate. The customer isn't right if they come in to your store and demand everything for free. Likewise a driver isn't right if he doesn't want to figure out which pedal is "stop" and which one is "go". You must have a certain small amount of domain knowledge to use the complex tools you're given, and dumbing things down for the lowest common denominator is a Sisyphean task because there's always a lower common denominator just under them.

Touch screens replaced mice with something that feels more natural.

While more natural, they are not as useful. they require ui elements to have WAY more realestate on already paltry screens in most cases, (seriously, most 15" laptops are 1366x768) and don't allow for easy access to context menus. right clicking things was the best thing that ever happened to UIs since renaming directories to folders.

It begets simpler software, which is a win win, at least in my book.

design me a complex product in solidworks with a touch only interface please.

how about some detailed, effects heavy video project?

Pro apps and power users still needs mice, I need mice for using Photoshop, but I do believe we were discussing Average Joe and his apps.

> Touch screens replaced mice with something that feels more natural.

Oh, yeah? Show me the data you have that supports your statement.

People are buying and using touch devices, and they claim it's easy to use.

People have purchased enough touch devices to _replace_ mice? Is using a mouse a weird thing to do nowadays?

No, but it's an evolution – mice is still needed for power users and pro apps.

They didn't replace mice. They established themselves as an alternative for an entirely different use case.

They're now used in cases where mice was used before.

Foolish line of reasoning. Of course they do things wrong. It's just that you have a different set of expectations for what users must learn to do to operate something than other people.

(e.g. users need to know how to turn on their computer, what a usb port is to charge/connect peripherals, etc.)

I think it's a great principle to design from, it challenges one do to better. And: users wouldn't need to know what a USB port is, if the design was self-evident.

I don't think reasoning like "must" (or "never") pushes innovation and great design.

"users wouldn't need to know what a USB port is, if the design was self-evident."

"I don't think reasoning like "must" (or "never") pushes innovation and great design"

So "never" getting to know what a USB port is for, "must" be the result of great design ? It "must" be, but that would be bad... by you own stunted definitions. But do keep moving the goal posts around.

In the end you just produce a lot of forced substitutive declarations, like the concepts of innovation and great design that you use. You seem to void them in the process.

They will always be "better" solely because they are used by you, no matter the paradox and bs level needed to try to justify something that isn't even real.

Never having to know what a USB port is, while still getting your digital pictures into your photo app is great design.

I am going to let the "never" slide because you switched on it again. So we are down to your point being that there aren't any good designers around ? And somehow "great design" occludes knowledge.

Does this configure or bring any hope for users, it would be the designers that lock users out of the know-how... you see how that may not even be possible, because of innate properties like human curiosity, the very target of said "great design".

I don't understand, could you give an example?

>Yes, in principle they could learn that stuff; but they consider it to be a waste of their valuable time, for which they have other priorities.

Yet they spend their valuable time on watching television while being bombarded with adverts and forced to come back because their favorite series always ends with a cliff-hanger. Or they are drinking. Or they are working excessive hours because in spite of the fact that we have automated massive swathes of work, five days a week is still the standard, which makes absolutely no sense. Or they are too stressed by their dire financial situation because we have an economy based on gambling and usury.

My point is that people are naturally curious creatures who, given the time and opportunity, are quite capable of learning anything.

When we have a society which spends a great deal of resources constantly diverting peoples' attention, creating fake demands and generally holding an air of chaos, is it a wonder that nobody can be bothered to learn how to operate a revolutionary class of machines which provide one with knowledge about anything and everything?

By dumbing things like this down, we are approaching the problem from the wrong end. We need to work on creating a bigger leisure class which will naturally be inclined to understand it's environment better, since it will actually have the time and focus necessary to do so.

By another way of analogy - we're in the position of the 16th century puritans (in this case tech nerds) asserting that ofcourse everyone must learn to read (or operate computers) so that they can read the Bible (internet) for themselves and interpret the word of collective wisdom directly. Notice how the result of that battle was not to dumb down the English language, which is unnecessarily complicated in many places, but to teach people how to use the bloody thing. This is a similar situation.

It's not about learning the inner workings of the computer but about having a very basic understanding of fundamental concepts.

A computer is eventually nothing but a tool to get stuff done. A user not willing to learn those basic concepts is the equivalent to a craftsman not willing to learn how to use a hammer.

I agree that the inner workings are probably far too complex to understand for anybody not working in the field, but they aren't expected to either. As I pointed out in a different reply, hierarchical storage is no different from putting things and thoughts into mental drawers, as we do all the time (even though we're often not supposed to do so). It's a ridiculously simple concept.

I also agree that devices like tablets and smartphones, which are ultimately just consumer devices, not meant for any productive work, will get by without this concept (although I personally prefer having it). I wouldn't want my laptop, desktop, workstation, whatever to be without directory structure though.

Can we stop with this rubbish that you can't do productive work on a tablet.

Tablets can access web apps and the massive amount of functionality they provide today.

I never claimed they literally can't do productive work, they're just not built to do it.

Touch interfaces and the corresponding on-screen keyboards are good enough for short texts but even writing a medium-sized email is a pain in the bottom compared to the full-size keyboards computers come with. Autocorrection systems make it less painful, but they're absolutely useless when writing formal languages like code or math and since their capabilities are limited, natural language writing isn't as easy as with a hardware keyboard either.

There's a reason for the name of the category "consumer electronics". They're meant to be good at consuming media, not producing it, that's what the workstation is for.

Yes, a tablet doesn't work very well for writing if you don't connect a keyboard to it. Neither does a workstation.

There's a slight difference though. A tablet is meant to be carried around and an external keyboard kind of ruins this, though I admit there've been solutions to this which didn't completely suck.

A workstation is stationary, so mobility isn't an issue and usually the keyboard comes with the workstation anyway.

And on a sidenote, what you're basically saying is that it's easier to be productive when you have any means of I/O at all than when you haven't.

Doesn't change a thing about what those devices are focused on though.

I honestly believe that there are some people who simply don't "get" hierarchical folder structures. And it's not a small percentage.

Years ago when Windows Explorer tree-views were all the rage our desktop app had them all over the place. And the number of support requests were phenomenal. We'd demonstrate the tree-view - expanding out folder nodes till you find what you want, the user would go "Oh that's how it works" and then a few days later would ring up with the same request. I think there's just some part of their brain that can't deal with the geometry of it or something.

You see a similar issue with recursion: it's never seemed particularly difficult to me. But there are, apparently, lots of fairly smart undergraduates who are taking a CS class who just can't grasp it.

A tree is recursive--maybe that inability to "get" hierarchical folder structures is somehow related to an inability to understand recursion?

I think it's the same sort of idea but at a lower level (as it were).

The (very) few times I've tried to explain recursion to non-CS-types have always been met with "I sort of get it" looks (meaning "we'll have forgotten in five minutes").

But there seems to be no pattern to the non-tech people who don't understand tree-views.

The only thing I've noticed is it might be maths-related - as people in the accounts departments invariably get trees straight away.

> I think that at a certain point people have to accept that there are just some things must be learned in order to operate a computer.

This! I personally like the idea of learning concepts in order to be able to make sense of a computer or it's applications. One might argue that the learning curve is too steep for some users, but on this particular topic it just isn't. Come on, we've been putting stuff into boxes for ages. In a metaphorical sense we put everything in boxes and label them in some way. Directories do exactly that. We're used to it and, as much as I hate those three words, "it just works".

Trying to make every last bit of a computer absolutely idiot-proof harms productivity (compare poweruser tools to what-your-grandma-uses) and may even scare away those who actually have to get work done.

I believe we've actually reached the point where the "dumbing down" started a while ago, and it's a rather bad trend.

I am a man and when I first had to do the laundry with our new washing machine I read the manual supplied by the manufacturer. I did the same with a lot of kitchen and household appliances.

So why in hell people whose daily jobs consist of interacting with Word and the computer and managing files are exempted of reading their computer's manual ?! Nobody is asking them to learn a programming language (well, that fad died last week) or compute binary soustraction. Just use some folders (and learn a shortcut or two like ctrl+v, ctrl+c).

I admit good introduction material to "the computer" are a rare thing nowadays (there is a market!) and I remember the win95/98 introduction to the mouse was something good and an interactive learning software should be made available on every platform (I believe ubuntu would grasp billions of users if they provided something like that).

Not getting hierarchical storage is like... I don't know... not getting the subway schedule ? Or how to operate a tv remote ?

I'll bet it wasn't the concept of directories that those secretaries of yours had trouble with. I'll bet that they simply weren't told that they existed and the computer offered no hints and that when they were told, they understood it readily.

My mom frequently has trouble with directories but it's not the concept she has trouble with. It's the fact that the filesystem is so huge that it's hard to manage and there is no way she keep where everything is in her head. The fact that operating system files, application files, and user created files are mixed rather indiscriminately is probably the biggest problem. Also photo-managing applications trying to make things simple by saving files but not telling her where they put them leads to a lot of confusion. But the idea of files and folders she has not trouble with; it's the difficulty of navigating an impossibly huge and insufficiently mapped directory structure that she has trouble with.

The concept of folders is pretty straightforward: "Everything has its place and there's a place for everything." People naturally organize things through place and directories create a semblance of 'place' for abstract pieces of data. (Place is actually such a powerful concept in the human mind, that the Jesuits used to memorize complicated arguments and passages by going for walks and assigning concepts to different locations on the way.) Tagging and search based systems while technically more powerful, I think would actually be more confusing not less because the concept is not as intuitive.

i experience with these types of people has been tht they're not failing to understand folders, they're going 'i dont like new things, therefore i refuse to understand this'

I'm a programmer and I have problems with files and folders. That's why the UNIX "find" command exists.

It's a question of jargon. What does the layperson think of when they hear "directory", a telephone directory? Whereas if you call them "folders" or even better, as on the Amiga, "drawers", then it all becomes very obvious.

Not really - it is not very intuitive that you put folders into folders and have all your documents in one big folder containing all your other folders. And you don't have drawers containing other drawers either, in the real world.

But apart from bad metaphors, I thing non-geeks have a problem with organizing things in arbitrary deep hierarchies. You don't really do that a lot outside of computing.

Sure you do, it's common in any sort of industry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_materials

Maybe we should call them matryoshkas?

When I started out using computers, an adult explained it to me using a shelf as a metaphor: The drive is a shelf. You can have multiple shelves. Shelves have compartments, which contain things. Some of those things can contain other things, like boxes or folders. Made the nesting rather obvious to me.

Indeed but not quite.

Inside drawers you have shelves. On the shelves you have boxes. In the boxes you have folders, envelopes, files...

There's more: in the files you have pictures, frames, tables

I should probaly have said recursive hierarchies is not intuitive for everyone. Everyone can understand shelves in drawers, boxes on shelves and so on. What is confusing to many is folders inside folders or drawers inside drawers arbitrarily deep.

I've never seen anyone having trouble with putting little boxes inside bigger boxes.

The problem is not directory, it's the hierarchy. The first time I have this described was a looong time ago when reading Alan Cooper's "About Face". I guess this is not news to anyone who is interested in UI and UX.

Obvious? Then you must be in favour of Apple's move to 'at most one level of hierarchy'. Or do you find the concept of drawers inside drawers inside drawers intuitive?

Not to comment on how it works in a UI, but my chest of drawers at home does indeed have two levels, there is a smaller drawer (for socks) inside the main top drawer.

Call 'em "boxes" or "bags" for all I care - the point is the geek word "directory" isn't suitable for non-technical people, I think everyone understand the concept of "putting things in things" because they do it all the time in the real world.

I haven't seen the word "directory" widely used amongst laymen since the move from Windows 3.x to Windows 95, where if my memory serves me (I was 9 at the time) Microsoft made the change to "folder" themselves.