April 9, 2009

The Desktop Metaphor

Great essay by Steven Frank on the current state of the desktop UI. About hierarchical file systems, he writes:

All major operating systems today still use basically the same hierarchical file system that we’ve used pretty much forever. Is it a natural fit for the human mind? Not especially.

In fact, the basic hierarchical file system is so incredibly poor at its main and only task that whenever we actually want to manage files (or data in general), we use applications that implement different concepts on top of the basic file system - iTunes, iPhoto, Yojimbo, Together, Evernote, Bento, your mail client…

Steven Frank touches all kinds of other topics, too.

I love Brent Simmons’ take on this:

I feel as if it’s my responsibility as a software developer to help figure out what comes after the desktop metaphor, and I feel a little bad that we haven’t delivered it yet.

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designed_for_use_small

If you liked this, you'll love my book. It's called Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web. In it, I cover the whole design process, from user research and sketching to usability tests and A/B testing. But I don't just explain techniques, I also talk about concepts like discoverability, when and how to use animations, what we can learn from video games, and much more.

You can find out more about it (and order it directly, printed or as a DRM-free ebook) on the Pragmatic Programmers website.