Attitude Towards File Systems - A List of User Stories
These stories are collected from anecdotes of various developers, and seek to expose either their relatives' or their own attitude and experiences of file systems. They are not so-to-speak actual personas since they're not derived from a qualitative analysis of actual usage data.
How to improve this document: it'd be useful to include stories from a large range of populations, such as children and the elderly, people with various sorts of accessibility requirements, from non-Western cultures and various computer proficiency backgrounds. If adding a persona, indicate who they are and how experienced they are with computers to avoid having too many similar profiles
The flat file system
"This is personal anecdotal evidence, but one of the big issues I've seen with less-computer-savvy folks (relatives, parents, friends) is that they don't grasp a full understanding the filesystem. It's difficult for them to visualize an infinitely nesting set of folders, since that obviously can't happen in real life. So they tend to think of the system as flat, with a few folders, and if they can't see the proper in the immediate explorer window, they think the files that they had were lost forever.[...]They're always losing their files: "where did I put my files?""
These users might end up with a disorganised file system where most files are under direct folders such as Documents/, Downloads/, Music/ and may particularly have trouble with documents saved in a specific location by certain apps, such as Videos/Webcam for Cheese.
Since these users don't exploit the file system's features, they might benefit from a per-app or a timeline-based or other flattened views of the file system? They also need filters and search mechanisms to compensate for a large amount of data being presented in the same view. How do these users handle files with identical names?
The desktop working set
"They think of the "desktop" not as just another folder, but as the working set, almost. This is rarer, but I've seen several people drag files out of folders and onto the desktop, then open it in Word, and then when they're done, they file it back away."
These users may benefit from having their documents closer to their apps, yet it's unclear how they would usually start an activity in a DE where the file system is not exposed. They don't seem to grasp, either, the fact that an app can be launched and then a file opened within this app. Still, file systems are an efficient way for them to store their data and they might need education or clearer hints on the fact that the location of a file does not matter to the app.
(note from Steve: because people share their experiences of computing, it's more likely that you'd observe two family members or relatives with the same behaviour than completely disjoint individuals; so behaviour observed on multiple occasions from really disjoint users is more likely to be widespread)
The social messy user
"This is the story of my sister and of some of her friends. They're not computer-savvy, most of them working in factories and using computers at work only on specific enterprise UIs for basic tasks. They're young, finished high-school with various results but did not have training in IT. They almost only do social stuff such as using Facebook and sharing music/movies, and only occasionally write a CV or a letter. They don't have an email address (or they forgot the password ages ago). They might replicate their CV on a USB key, while the computer / external drive are more about movies and music. The external drive is for long-time storage of things that matter more to them, and for sharing convenience (despite unlimited Internet, they don't usually make accounts to online services, because it's complex and you have to remember a password). They have a very social use of computers and share files a lot; those files are oft. downloaded or ripped from CDs/DVDs, oft. called "Untitled %d.mp3" because that's how it was obtained (either through sharing or the ripping app they use). These users will re-find the album they want to listen to in "From Bob" or "From Alice" depending on who gave it to them. Their file system is an apparent mess, yet they know where most of the things are. Photos are stored first by sharer name, then by event name."
Such users occasionally need search features, but the key information for them is clearly where some media comes from (e.g. which third party, download app, or whether they put it on their machine themselves). Content types are not a good fit for these users. Windows 7-like libraries could be a good fit if users don't have to do the mapping themselves; they already don't sort out their incoming files so wouldn't bother to spend time configuring libraries. Easier access to online storage (including others') and the ability to visualise the provenance of a file would be nice features for such users.
The project manager and his employees
"This is the story of a tiny company's manager and his employees. They export wine for a living, and they organise a lot of tasting events abroad. They have their in-house software to contact producers and use a web-based database and office documents to organise events and sales. I know them as I developed mailing list templates and maintained their front-end website for them. None have a CS training at all and they barely know how to use office documents. They had a shared folder set up (basically on the manager's machine) but clearly don't know how to handle customer data according to the law and how to backup their own work data. To work together, they adopted a per-project strategy on the shared folder and employees had to use it rather than their local computer. Problems ensued whenever this machine crashed or got disconnected. People all share an open-space office and will ask one another if they're using a file if they suspect concurrent access. Each user also had their own personal folder in the shared space, which others could access but were expected not to (unless the owner explicitly told them to go digging in it)."
(Western cultural background (France, South Africa), users without CS training from 20 to 50yo, organisational context, no disabilities, availability of external CS support, particularly old report - around 2007; machines include Windows and OS X machines, plus Linux for CS support staff)
A model per-owner/per-project fits these better, and a file system could be adapted to such a need despite any form of computer proficiency -- though most likely with external setup help for the actual sharing of the file system. No indication whether users would be using cloud storage now that it got democratized. The variety of file formats and lack of indication of who accessed a document last would make content-based/app-based/timeline-based UIs unsuited.