Mark Talbot

The Problem with “My Documents” in Windows XP

There are two major user experience problems with the way Microsoft implemented the "My Document" folder in Windows XP. The first is a problem of taxonomy and the second is a problem of collation.

Taxonomy Problem:

The "My Documents" folder in Windows XP provides us with an important lesson in how a misguided informational taxonomy can cause major usability problems. As expected, documents (Word, PDF, Excel files, etc) are found within the "My Documents" folder. However, folders entitled "My Music", "My Pictures", "My Videos", and "My Downloads" are also found within the "My Documents" folder. This creates a parent-child relationship between "My Documents" and those sub-folders. This is problematic because videos, music, and pictures are not types of documents. Therefore, there should not be a parent/child relationship between those folders and "My Documents".

Collation Problem:

The second problem is related to collation. Collation is the organization of information (in this case folders and files) into a meaningful order. When viewing lists of folders on a computer the most common type of collation that people utilize is alphabetization. Because the word "My" is appended to the front of the folder names, users are unable to utilize alphabetization to find the folder they’re searching for. For example, the video folder wouldn’t be found listed with other folders that start with the letter "V", rather it would be found under the "M" section. From a user’s perspective, this is unexpected. Unexpected behaviour is very often the cause of usability problems.

The solutions:

The solution to both of these problems is simple. Placing the folders for documents, videos, downloads, and pictures on the same level will solve the taxonomy problem because it will remove the illogical parent-child relationship that existed between "My Documents" and its sub-folders.

Removing the word "My" from the front of the folder names will solve the collation problem because it will allow users to find folders based on the alphabetization of folder names. As you can see in the screenshot below, the software developers of Mac OS X have named its folders correctly.

Tags: Information Architecture, User Experience, Windows

What is a Controlled Vocabulary?

Our spoken language is ambiguous when used to label content on a website. Different people will
use different words and phrases to describe the same thing. For example, some people say
"pants" while others may say "slacks" or "trousers". This ambiguity presents problems for
retrieving information on the web because people tend to search with the same language they
speak. Consider an online clothing store which uses the label "pants" to describe that two-legged
item of clothing. If a user were to type "slacks" into the site’s search box the result would be zero
hits.

A control vocabulary solves this problem by creating a list of preferred terms (PT) and variant terms (VT). A PT would be the word you prefer to use throughout your site. A VT is a different word representing the same concept. Consider this example:

Sparkling Wine (PT) = Champagne (VT) = Bubbly (VT)

If a user search for ‘Bubbly’ (the variant term) the search system would return results for ‘Sparkling Wine’ (the preferred term).  Without a controlled vocabulary, a search for ‘Bubbly’ would return 0 hits.

A CV can take into account synonyms, common misspellings, relevant keywords, and
abbreviations.

If you’re interested in learning more about controlled vocabularies, I highly(!) recommend reading Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld.  It is one of the most useful web development books ever written.  Personally, it’s my favorite tech book of all-time because it’s full of academic research and real-world examples.

Tags: Information Architecture