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Except it does not work for those users because automatically managing vast unordered, uncategorized data sets is not a problem we know how to solve. If we knew
by Veserv 5y ago
Except it does not work for those users because automatically managing vast unordered, uncategorized data sets is not a problem we know how to solve. If we knew how to solve that problem, we could just implement it in the existing hierarchical manually-organized paradigm by just having one hierarchical level and dumping all your data into it. Given that the new model fits in the old model, the only reason for demolishing the old model is for efficiency reasons and there is very little in the way of efficiency that can be gained by converting the relatively shallow organizational trees that are commonly used for a single-level store.
Why do I believe we do not know how to solve the problem? As the article inadvertently points out, the unorganized data they want is not accessible and Mac Spotlight, a tool that operates on unorganized data, does an "OK Job, but not a miraculous one". If Apple knew how to super search the vast trove of unorganized data and file formats for content-specific data and always get it right would there be any reason they would not do so? It would clearly be strictly superior to their existing offering. For that matter, they bring up browsing history in Safari which is an even easier problem and also claim it hardly works. For evidence outside of Apple, think of all the in-app search systems that can barely even search plaintext for things you know exist. I frequently have problems with Gmail not finding emails despite giving exact string matches. These problems are all subsets of the proposed problem, which must be solved to solve the harder problem, and which would offer immediate material benefits for their solution yet do not or barely exist.
The problem is not a mismatch between solution and user workflow. The problem is that we do not know how to solve the problem for all meaningful workflows. The best we have achieved is creating and supporting a workflow that allows the problem to be solved in many useful cases. Luckily, if the problem can actually be solved in the future, it can easily be bolted onto the existing solution to test viability before going all-in.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> It would clearly be strictly superior to their existing offering. For that matter, they bring up browsing history in Safari which is an even easier problem and also claim it hardly works. For evidence outside of Apple For evidence outside of Apple, just try to use browser history in Chrome or Firefox. They're completely unreliable, entirely useless. For me, it's 50/50 chance I'll get a result when searching for a site that I visited few days earlier. > think of all the in-app search systems that can barely even search plaintext for things you know exist Exactly. Most of the search systems I've worked with have one, big problem: they don't feel reliable. You type in a query, a system starts a search. You get some indicator of progress, which eventually expires. Typically, search systems don't tell you if the search was exhaustive - did it check every possible thing that could match, or did it bail out after hitting some time limit? They also often meddle with the query, modifying it or doing fuzzy matches, in ways not communicated to you in the user interface. With such systems, if the thing I'm looking for isn't in the result set, I don't feel confident it isn't there. Manual file organization (or any direct data access) has this property of being exhaustive: a file is either there or it isn't. Direct file access means that if you don't trust your file searcher, you can always look for yourself. There are many other challenges ahead if we want "universal search" to work, but a big step forward would be addressing these trust issues. It's entirely an UI issue. Instead of "0 results found", say "0 results found after searching contents of all text files in Documents folder (symbolic links not followed)". Instead of "about 123 results", say "123 results found, there may be more matches, [click here] to read about limitations of the search method". (And on a general point: users aren't as dumb as the common claim is. Our industry is treating them as dumb, taking away every opportunity to learn and build mental models - and then complains that users "are dumb".)