TY - GEN
T1 - How do we find personal files?
T2 - 30th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2012
AU - Bergman, Ofer
AU - Whittaker, Steve
AU - Sanderson, Mark
AU - Nachmias, Rafi
AU - Ramamoorthy, Anand
N1 - Place of conference:Austin, TX
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Folder navigation is the main way that computer users retrieve their personal files. However we know surprisingly little about navigation, particularly about how it is affected by the operating system used, the interface presentation and the folder structure. To investigate this, we asked 289 participants to retrieve 1,109 of their own active files. We analyzed the 4,948 resulting retrieval steps, i.e. moves through the hierarchical folder tree. Results show: (a) significant differences in overall retrieval time between PC and Mac that arise from different organizational strategies rather than interface design; (b) the default Windows presentation is suboptimal - if changed, retrieval time could be reduced substantially and (c) contrary to our expectations, folder depth did not affect step duration. We discuss possible reasons for these results and suggest directions for future research.
AB - Folder navigation is the main way that computer users retrieve their personal files. However we know surprisingly little about navigation, particularly about how it is affected by the operating system used, the interface presentation and the folder structure. To investigate this, we asked 289 participants to retrieve 1,109 of their own active files. We analyzed the 4,948 resulting retrieval steps, i.e. moves through the hierarchical folder tree. Results show: (a) significant differences in overall retrieval time between PC and Mac that arise from different organizational strategies rather than interface design; (b) the default Windows presentation is suboptimal - if changed, retrieval time could be reduced substantially and (c) contrary to our expectations, folder depth did not affect step duration. We discuss possible reasons for these results and suggest directions for future research.
KW - Files
KW - Navigation
KW - Personal information management
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84862074480&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2207676.2208707
DO - 10.1145/2207676.2208707
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AN - SCOPUS:84862074480
SN - 9781450310154
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
SP - 2977
EP - 2980
BT - Conference Proceedings - The 30th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2012
Y2 - 5 May 2012 through 10 May 2012
ER -