[OSX-Users] Re: Mystery Icon

[David Tarrant]

This is also a preservation problem, users don't preserve stuff unless they see the context in which it is stored as valuable as well.

This is my usual problem with digital vs printed. A book holds more value than the same content carefully digitised, this is because people can ogle over a leather bound book and occasionally sniff it, but as it gets older, god forbid you should open it! 

A digital copy still doesn't hold the same value cos you can't touch it, thus the requirement to use an icon which represents something physical in an attempt to give the file some physical value.

Yes it's a n HCI problem, but it's also a psychological problem in my view.

Dave T


On 28 Mar 2011, at 12:55, Philip Boulain wrote:

> On 28/03/2011 12:51, Les A Carr wrote:
>> Sigh. Yes, I get it cos I'm old enough to remember when 5 1/4" floppy disks were an innovation. So a 3.5" disk still looks shiny and modern to me - BUT WHY ARE WE STILL USING THEM as an image of persistent cloud storage in Google Docs. Isn't it just time that we moved on before we embarrass ourselves in front of the new students?
> 
> Because nobody's come up with a better metaphor that sticks yet. A picture of a hard drive is no good because it's just a block (no good showing platters---we've moving into SSD) and most users won't actually see one, whereas floppies were user-visible in day-to-day operation for years.
> 
> A picture of a cloud would make me think "weather forecast", and is still inappropriate for wanting to save data to the local filesystem.
> 
> -- 
> | Philip Boulain   PhD student |  |\_|\ | Moore's Law doesn't apply to |
> | IAM, ECS, Uni of Southampton | >o.o < | batteries.                   |
> | http://zepler.net/~lionsphil |  `---' |         -- Douglas Crockford |