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Re: [Ayatana] "fileless" paradigm
On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:03:12 +0100, Roberto Guido <bob4job@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 13:51 +0000, femorandeira wrote:

Search is usually
*only* used as a last resource tool when the user can not remember at 
 all where he put that document...


I don't agree this.
This is probably true for power-users, or at least people used to the
hierarchical filesystem we daily manage and with deep dependency on it, 
but not for entry-level users.


I was not talking about the internet: the internet contains a vast
amount of information created by other people and searching it is the
only realistic option.

I was talking about the manipulation of the personal archive by people
that use a computer often. In that case, it seems that people rely
more on some form of spatial organisation that in searching. You
obviously know more than me about entry-level users because you are
working with them on a regular basis (and I think that's a great
thing to do, btw).

An interesting paper on this is "Improved search engines and
navigation preference in personal information management", by Bergman
et al. (2008). They wanted to test the hypothesis that search would
become more and more commonly used as the tools became better (with
cross–format search, fast retrieval, better design, incremental
search, etc.). For this, they got the data from a experiment that
took place in 1995 and replicated it in 2008.

To their surprise, they found that participants used search only for
4–15% retrieval attempts and that the improvements in search
technology did not cause a substantial change in the picture.

They gave a number of possible reasons that might explain their
results. For instance, navigation is more consistent than searching:
you have to remember the location of the item, as opposed to
remembering one of the possible multiple ways of searching for it.
Navigation is also based on recognition and is assisted by the use of
spatial clues that help the user reach the desired goal step by step.
Of course, the "location" of a file is not a real characteristic but
it seems a natural metaphor because if mimics what happens in the real
world.

Now, this is just an experiment and I am not trying to defend the
current state of things, but I would like to see some evidence before
jumping on the wagon :-)


Felipe