Stacks and Piles
by DanI did my Master’s thesis project (play with the prototype) on creating digital piles and piling as an alternative to folders and messy desktops. It’s interesting to see that Apple, who did work in this area about 15 years ago, is finally incorporating them into the Leopard version of OSX, albeit in a way I didn’t expect, making the piles spring out of the Dock, not on the desktop. It was rumored to be added in earlier versions but nothing ever appeared. Now it seems it has. Nifty.
I wonder, however, if putting these stacks in the Dock loses some of the readiness at hand and visibility that make our physical piles so useful. When I researched how and why people pile papers on their physical desks, I found some really interesting things about the anatomy of piles and how they get used that I then tried to build into my piling system. Based on my research, I came up with a set of design principles for piles:
- Items on the top of piles should be visible.
- As files get accessed less frequently, they should drift deeper into the pile.
- Piles should be easy to file when done.
- Users need to be able to browse through the piles to find things not at the top.
- Pile visualization should reflect the amount of items in the pile.
- Pile visualization should reflect the last time accessed.
- It should be easy to re-sort the pile (to move files back to the top or down to the bottom).
- It should be easy to discard things from the pile.
- It should be easy to pile things as they are received or created.
Looking over the new Stacks feature, I find few of these design principles being used. Granted, no one at Apple asked me, but I have to wonder how much the designers looked at physical piling behavior before creating Stacks. Most of my principles are fairly obvious with even a brief study of piling behavior. I didn’t spend overlong researching my piling system, but the time I spent in the field was invaluable to understanding what seems to be obvious, but definitely has some nuances that could be reflected in any digital re-creation.
I also can’t help but wonder whether having Stacks on the desktop instead of in the Dock wouldn’t have been a better design choice, so that some of the usefulness of analog piles could be recreated and reimagined more broadly. This doesn’t mean that Stacks won’t be useful, but possibly not as useful as they could be. Imagine physically being able to “scatter” stacks by holding down your mouse button and wiggling it over a pile. Or simply being able to see at a glance what the top three items you last touched in a pile were.
Apple, I think, did the same thing with Widgets — marginalized a powerful tool. By pushing widgets too much off to the side (effectively creating a widget mode) instead of incorporating them onto the desktop itself, they rendered widgets a lot less useful. I fear that’s the fate of Stacks as well. We shall see.
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June 11th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Honestly, I look at both concepts and think I’d never use either. I do group my files on my desktop, but visibly — so they’re all spread out on the desktop so that I can see what’s there at a glance. I don’t WANT to have to click into something to expand a pile of files and have to rummage through and reorganize them. And it’s hard for me to see how it’s that different than having files in folders on my desktop or on my dock.
But that’s kind of beside your point — that Apple should pay attention to people’s behavior and design for that, which I think is a good one. They definitely failed us with the widgets.
But, I do wonder if we need to be careful when translating an understanding of physical-world behavior into computer behavior, because it’s certainly possible to take real world metaphors too far and force an organization onto things that isn’t necessarily ideal. Like Merlin and others point out at http://www.43folders.com/2006/06/23/bumptop/
— A computer can make it possible to organize things in better ways than real life — tagging, quicksilver fast searches, etc.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Piling is only done by some people–most people–but not all. It’s an option that wouldn’t be used by everyone. Stacks will probably only get used as a percentage of people. Don’t fall into the trap of “If I don’t use it, no one else will/should.”
I wasn’t suggesting a one-to-one translation of analog to digital–in my system a pile can be instantly sorted alphabetically or by date added or most viewed–all things you couldn’t do physically very easily.
June 11th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Hi Dan,
You make some good points, though to be fair we have not seen enough of Apple’s implementation to know if there are modes like you describe in their stacks. It seems to me that the visual implementation we’ve seen would easily support in-stack re-ordering and drag-to-trash from the stack.
On, the other hand, I don’t see how Stack-size or last-accessed time could be communicated in Apple’s stacks - a pity, as you’re right about this information being very useful. I’m curious to play with it myself.
On a related note, is it just me, or is Apple readying us for a touch-screen UI? “Finderflow”, Stacks, Time Machine, and Spaces all seem to be made more for fingers than for mice.
June 12th, 2007 at 3:25 am
[…] adaptive path » blog » blog archive » Stacks and Piles Via Jones (tags: via:blackbeltjones stacks adaptivepath piles hci ui osx 10.5 leopard) […]
June 13th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
yep, i immediately thought of your project, Dan, as well as mine from CMU graduate studio
ttp://www.udanium.com/udanium2003/html/hyperpiles.html
stacks, piles, streams–perennial concepts that won’t go away as constant attempts to enhance the traditional desktop UI. (as i gaze upon the literal piles of unread books and magazines and old bills stagnating on the floor of my bedroom…) it’ll be intersting to see how this pans out with Leopard in the final build–and then how fans will modify it via plug-ins and shareware utilities
June 13th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
oops, mistyped the link… sorry!
http://www.udanium.com/udanium2003/html/hyperpiles.html
June 21st, 2007 at 9:17 am
I would like to be able to cycle through stacks/messes and a plain background with a key command. Right now I use a background utility to blank out my desktop. The key is I would want the stacks to be on my desktop, scattered where I placed them. This is the key reason I use Yahoo Widgets (Konfabulator) as opposed to the Mac widgets. I love to have them available and interspersed with my most important, time sensitive stacks.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 am
[…] på Adaptive Path studerade “piles” för sin masters-tes, och han har åtskilligt med kritiska synpunkter på Apples lösning: Looking over the new Stacks feature, I find few of these design principles being used. Granted, no […]
June 24th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
[…] previews for the web are here! I can’t help but wish for more — but most of the best ideas of HCI over the last 20 years are yet to be deployed to the masses. Hats off to the folks at […]