October 10, 2005 02:51 | Bits

Noguchi

Stevey sent me this a few days ago and I chuckled and thought to myself "yup, that's how I file files on my computer" and moved on.

Michal just wrote about it with some deeper pondering.

Some quick thoughts of my own:
In the physical world, I too employ a time/space/marking system. Though I have very few physical things which need to be filed or acted upon (mostly bills really), I have at any given time 3-4 piles going on my desk and on the shelf behind me. On my left; urgent, to my right; not so urgent, far right; sometime later, behind me; done. Generally these thigns stay in their envelopes and the sender's logo is my identifying mark. Sometimes I'll scribble to add a mark. ;)

But like I said, *on my computar*, well... in a nutshell: I have over the years settled on a small-set "taxonomy" which doesn't need much modifying. "Clients->Work", "Clients->Invoices", "Photos->Mine", "Music->Downloaded", etc. Then, where needed, I sort the view by date. I use Mac's color labels here and there sometimes, red for "done", blue for "keep an eye on this", green for "we are ON!", the colors' meanings dependent on context (Pics don't need to be kept tabs on right?).

Thinkign about it now though, a good combination of simple "bare essential" taxonomy/category/folder structure, using system metadata (date created, date modified) accomplishes much of this Noguchi system. "Spacial" hinting can be achieved with placing shortcuts to things in various places on your desktop or in your file system.

Hrm. Interesting.