The Folders We Live In: What We Need and What We Can Get

This paper reports one part of results of a qualitative study conducted in an information institute. By investigating how people creatively organize their information items in current hierarchical folder systems on computers, we try to identify what people need from current hierarchical folder structure and what they can get from the current structure. Specifically, people need two types of grouping in addition to ordering and highlighting, and especially better support on derivative relationships between items or groups of items. Current organization systems can provide overview and implicit contextual and workflow information. The impact of derivative relationship on multiple classification mechanisms is noted, and the connections between folders, tags and their possible use are discussed. The study provides implications for information organization system design.