Thursday, February 19, 2009

Random thoughts about design

1. Why don't the file have a tag indicating about its reading status? We see people who read a lot having trouble manually organizing the files into different folders, such as "to be read", "already read", "read and important",..., and etc. Why can't we add some tags to the files, and then it's easier for us to sort them based on the tags besides the dates/types/names.

2. Why can't Gmail add some more user friendly features such as: what kind of emails I am expecting this week(for example, emails from some companies), what kind of emails I usually don't want to see but only want to see for a certain period(for example, when you book airplane ticket, you need their confirmation. But in other times, you may not want to see tons of ads on airplane tickets).

3. If there is a software that could detect what you're doing on your computer, and personalize several applications automatically for you, then it's great. For example, when I book a ticket, my gmail account knows that I am waiting for ticket confirmation/seat booking/boarding card printing. When I am interested in buying a product, it automatically asks me information about my need, and display most relevant product as well as user review, or even buy it for me and ship it. Um, maybe just a dream now.

4. When we want personalization, how much do we care about privacy?

5. When you find old traditional design is not good, how much risk there is to totally change it? Will it win you more new users, or drive away your old users?

1 comment:

  1. I totally agree. I've been always wondering about the same thing as well. It's actually quite stupid, if you think about it. I think modern computers should allow for tagged file structuring and just abandon the current folder structure. I.e., each file is defined uniquely by a set of (possibly empty) tags and the file name.
    Think about all the cool algorithms that can then be implemented to efficiently retrieve files.
    Since we're us to folder structure, the migration will have to be gradual. For starer, OS should start including this as a feature.

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