1) Nobody, not even 90-year-old computer newbies, has trouble understanding hierarchical folders. There could not be a more natural concept of organization. It corresponds to a box inside a storage box inside a closet inside a room inside a house inside a neighborhood, etc. It's just every level is called a folder. Saying that "x" group of people "can't understand" that is just insulting to them, frankly.
2) People who use a flat directory to save 1000's of invoices on a computer which is only used for that, who do not understand folders -- that's fine. This doesn't prove folders are non-intuitive. They just don't need to understand folders, because the job doesn't require folders. The moment their job does, someone can explain it to them, and they will get it, the same way they get that paperclips go in the box on the shelf in the closet.
3) The original Mac OS (say, up to System 6) did a great job of making folders understandable. They were physical icons, physical window locations, they were easy to use. The Open/Save dialogs could be a bit confusing, and still are -- there's definitely room for improvement there.
4) Modern OS's do a terrible job at making folders understandable, because there are drive directories, often hidden, and then multiple user folders, and their Documents directories, and then things outside their Documents directories (like Desktop, Downloads, etc.), and fake folders that show the content of multiple other folders, etc.
5) So people are rightly claiming that folders are a mess and confusing. Yes they are, on modern OS's. But the problem is not with the concept of folders, it's with their back-assward modern implementations. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and claim that folders are bad. Instead, the solution is:
6) Modern OS's and apps: stop trying to organize our damned files for us! Stop auto-creating "Downloads" and "My Pictures" and "My Skype Photos" and "My Virtual Machines" directories. Just stop it! Instead, give each user their own home directory, have it be empty on a new computer, have every application open/save things in it by default (including downloads), and let the user organize things gradually as they see fit. And don't let anyone but a power user ever get outside of this directory.
(And ideally, stop allowing users to put documents on their desktop -- it just confuses things and nobody has ever come up with an intuitive way to integrate that with the concept of user folders (my desktop is inside my user folder, what?). Documents on a desktop is an outgrown metaphor that just nobody seems to have the courage to jettison.)
4) Modern OS's do a terrible job at making folders understandable, because there are drive directories, often hidden, and then multiple user folders, and their Documents directories, and then things outside their Documents directories (like Desktop, Downloads, etc.), and fake folders that show the content of multiple other folders, etc.
This is a particularly salient point -- in further particular:
fake folders that show the content of multiple other folders
I'll add to that, widgets that are not intuitive and/or don't clearly express the hierarchy.
My parents understand organization just fine. But then they encounter this interface that keeps breaking the basic rules and UI of same. They stop trusting the machine and themselves to interpret what it is presenting and doing.
I never said abstract was an issue. But, do you have a counter example that is inconsistent and complex and still intuitive without training? Because, it sounds like what your describing is what happens after someone has learned a system and not how long it takes them to learn it.
Let's make sure we are having the same discussion here.
I am saying that just because you understand the concept of directories in the real world does not mean that you can use that understanding in the digital world.
This is because the understanding the conceptual part is only a very very very small part of operating a computer.
There are many other things such as operating a machine, understanding moving around with a mouse, which is really a pointer on the screen (talk about decoy for understanding) then understanding clicking, double clicking, applications, documents, file structure, expanding collapsing and so on.
The list of skills you have to do to operate within the metaphor have absolutely nothing to do with you real life understanding of directories.
This is the problem. The conceptual/intellectual understanding does not lead to actual intutition in this other field cause it has nothing to do with directories and folders in real life.
It's like being dropped into the middle of the african savannah. Even though you conceptually understand the idea of lions, trees, the sun, earth, elephants etc. does not mean that you know how to get around or even how to survive.
You have no experience in the environment and thus you can't use your understanding of getting around New York to get around here too.
Just because you understand something in real life does not by any metrics mean that you understand it on a computer.
You grew up with computers for you it's secondary but you learned it.
Someone who have never used computers before do not understand the metaphor.
So no it's not insulting them.
2) Folders are non-intuitive if they aren't learned. There is no natural transfer of understanding between putting documents in a folder physically and then using your moves to drag some icons around. You assume there is, but there isn't, it has to be learned.
5) What people complain about is that it's not the web. They just want to click a link that takes them to where they want to be taken. Of course folders are a mess and confusing cause most data is a mess an confusing.
6) I am pretty sure that it actually works.
I think your understanding of how normal users think is probably as inaccurate as it could probably be.
Okay so let's just stop with the "I'm right you're wrong!" stuff. I think what we need to do here is some research. Are those who classify themselves as "computer illiterate" more or less capable of understanding the concept of directories than those who are more technically inclined?
Until we have some real research into this, we're just making things up, and that's A Bad Thing.
Your comment on #5 is interesting: local storage folders/directories don't correspond to the WWW experience.
Locally, I've got to dig through directories to find stuff. I've got some search tools, but they're generally primitive and/or hit-or-miss. I almost exclusively use the command line, not graphical file browsers (which I find exceptionally tedious).
On the WWW, I generally find stuff through a search engine which, with the benefit of some very clever back-end heuristics, does a really good job of turning up the right stuff. Or I might use my local bookmarks collection, though that again uses a folder metaphor and is a bit tedious to use.
But ... I use the Vimperator Firefox plugin, which makes my browser a lot more like a command line. So when I want to open a web page, I'll almost always switch to command mode and start typing a part of the URL or description of the site ... and Vimperator starts searching through my history and bookmarks for a set of likely matches, which I then tab to and hit <enter>. (Granted, some "superbar" navigation works similarly, though I find Vimperator's operation superior).
My experience is that directories work where you're going to put a certain level of thought into how you want to organize content. But heaps and search tools work better where you've got a lot of diverse content and want to be able to dig into it periodically.
The advantage of the web is that you are browsing the documents themselves rather than som structure hiding them. Since these documents link to each other you do not have to remember folds structures but simply click.
As Ajax becomes more prevalent, some sites and their features/documents are only accessible by some click sequence, rather than via direct navigation.
Well-behaved sites tend to be structured better, and offer navigational clues (breadcrumbing), and the like.
Many sites really don't have much intrinsic structure and are little more than a large bag (or set of bags) of pages or other objects (Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia), though these may have linkages (perferably hypertextual) between objects (notably: Wikipedia and kin).
One of the things I'm liking about using an e-book reader (Moon+Reader on Android, Calibre on Debian/Linux) is that rather than scatter docs through the filesystem, they're organized through the reader interface itself. Not an entirely novel concept -- the man and info commands have used a similar concept for years, and are amenable to organization through tools such as Debian's dwww (online localhost Web interface to locally stored documentation, including manpages, info pages, package documentation, and installed documentation resources). Including search and indexing.
Where the "document" dynamically changes depending on actions th euser takes within it, which aren't revealed/exposed through the URL, then this falls apart.
Eating is intuitive. I believe drinking water and defecating could also be considered intuitive.
The meaning of the word intuitive may not come to some folks via intuition, however. Merriam-Webster defines intuitive as: readily learned or understood; and intuition as: immediate apprehension or cognition.
Only because you wrote a bunch of other stuff that gave it context. Stubborn much? That statement, on it's own, says the opposite of what you meant. I don't know why you're arguing with me about it.
I am arguing with you about it because it's worth arguing about.
There is such a thing called intuition. It just doesn't transcend the way the OP claimed it would.
Intuition is something you build via experience. It allow you to navigate even things you haven't been exposed to before. As long as you understand the basic premise of the context.
The general consensus and then point of the OP was to say that understanding the metaphor is enough to make you navigate two different paradigms just because you understand one of them and use metaphors to connect them . I.e. you can use intuition from one of them in the other. This is simply wrong and is not given at all.
Which leads me to say that intuition is learned. I.e. it's not some linear concept where everything fit together, but rather it exists de facto disconnected underneath the metaphors and concepts.
A metaphor or concept is intuitive if it can be clearly understood once seen. "Without deduction or reasoning" as my dictionary puts it.
While I appreciate your comment, ThomPete's comment, perhaps better phrased as "Folders are intuitive once experienced" would generally be accepted to mean that the concept and behavior of files and folders, through a visual GUI metaphor, is generally grasped and understood (I'm not saying this is or isn't true, but it's a testable and reasonable proposition).
The visual metaphor isn't always manageable. It's not always appropriate. But for most people, the general idea of objects and containers is wired at a pretty low neural level. Enough so that I'm comfortable calling it "intuitive".
Socks and dressers are also intuitive. Doesn't mean my laundry doesn't find itself all over my room.
Your #4 and #6 are pretty spot on in my experience (which is mostly Linux / Unix systems, though I've certainly used others extensively).
Having multiple paths to the same location is confusing, especially when the rationale isn't made apparent to users.
The Windows drive-lettering mode is complete pants and should have died 20 years ago. Yes, there's an alternate scheme, but it's much more verbose, not widely advertised, and if not worse, roughly as bad.
Linux/Unix have terse directory names, but a very, very, very stable naming schema, with a lot of history behind them. Once learned, that's knowledge and behavior you can bank on.
The proliferation of "My ..." directories under user's home directories, the odd distinction between user home and "Desktop", and a slew of other things, really speaks to a horrible mash of concepts which no one (or no empowered team) ever sat down to think through rationally. I've always found the "My ..." meme to beneedlessly verbose and highly condescending (where similar conventions are used on Linux, the "My " is virtually always dropped, thank you unknown benefactors). The use of dotfiles rather than a dedicated $HOME/etc/ directory means that there's a proliferation of magic files and directories off of a user's home direcotry which are significant ... yet hard to distinguish from other folders. As a WindowMaker fan, the presence of a non-dotfile "GNUstep/" directory off my home dir has long been a mild annoyance.
What's also lacking in general computer training / mentoring are suggestions on how to best organize a user's directory space. There's a fascination with desktop screenshots, but I'd largely find an archive of 3-4 level directory trees interesting. How people organize their work has a lot to say about how they do their work.
> (And ideally, stop allowing users to put documents on their desktop -- it just confuses things and nobody has ever come up with an intuitive way to integrate that with the concept of user folders (my desktop is inside my user folder, what?). Documents on a desktop is an outgrown metaphor that just nobody seems to have the courage to jettison.)
Why not make the desktop the home folder, so my files are quick to access? Maybe one could even create a second Desktop for shortcuts and user actions.
1) Nobody, not even 90-year-old computer newbies, has trouble understanding hierarchical folders. There could not be a more natural concept of organization. It corresponds to a box inside a storage box inside a closet inside a room inside a house inside a neighborhood, etc. It's just every level is called a folder. Saying that "x" group of people "can't understand" that is just insulting to them, frankly.
2) People who use a flat directory to save 1000's of invoices on a computer which is only used for that, who do not understand folders -- that's fine. This doesn't prove folders are non-intuitive. They just don't need to understand folders, because the job doesn't require folders. The moment their job does, someone can explain it to them, and they will get it, the same way they get that paperclips go in the box on the shelf in the closet.
3) The original Mac OS (say, up to System 6) did a great job of making folders understandable. They were physical icons, physical window locations, they were easy to use. The Open/Save dialogs could be a bit confusing, and still are -- there's definitely room for improvement there.
4) Modern OS's do a terrible job at making folders understandable, because there are drive directories, often hidden, and then multiple user folders, and their Documents directories, and then things outside their Documents directories (like Desktop, Downloads, etc.), and fake folders that show the content of multiple other folders, etc.
5) So people are rightly claiming that folders are a mess and confusing. Yes they are, on modern OS's. But the problem is not with the concept of folders, it's with their back-assward modern implementations. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and claim that folders are bad. Instead, the solution is:
6) Modern OS's and apps: stop trying to organize our damned files for us! Stop auto-creating "Downloads" and "My Pictures" and "My Skype Photos" and "My Virtual Machines" directories. Just stop it! Instead, give each user their own home directory, have it be empty on a new computer, have every application open/save things in it by default (including downloads), and let the user organize things gradually as they see fit. And don't let anyone but a power user ever get outside of this directory.
(And ideally, stop allowing users to put documents on their desktop -- it just confuses things and nobody has ever come up with an intuitive way to integrate that with the concept of user folders (my desktop is inside my user folder, what?). Documents on a desktop is an outgrown metaphor that just nobody seems to have the courage to jettison.)