Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [67]
– Provide more ways to delete bits. To "let the bits go," bit-literate users will want to delete their bits, or at least move them out of the incoming location, in lots of different ways. The Delete feature will be especially important, and it should also be combined with other features where appropriate. For example, a bit-literate e-mail program must offer "delete-and-next," a single command that deletes the current message and advances to the next one. (There must be a "delete-and-previous," too.) Other deletion features may work automatically, like the time window, described below.
– Offer more time-based features. Many bitstreams are best organized by time; tools that operate on those bitstreams should be designed with that in mind. For example, a bit-literate e-mail program might show how many messages arrived in the inbox in the past month, and how many messages were still in the inbox every day at midnight. (Graphs work well in displaying time-based data and should be liberally available, always with an easily accessed option for users to close or hide them.) There are other time-based features listed below.
- The time window: This enables deleted bits to stay in a holding location before being automatically erased from memory after a certain time period. This allows users to use Delete liberally, without fear of accidentally erasing something important. For example, an e-mail program should allow the user to set a time window for the number of days that messages in the "trash" will be kept before the program erases them. A time window also allows users to avoid unbounded bitstreams by capping the amount of data that can accumulate. For example, by setting a window of a week on a Sent Items folder, users can retrieve anything they sent in the past week, and they never have to clean out the folder. Time windows are useful in many more applications than e-mail; for starters, Mac OSX's Trash and the Windows Recycling Bin should offer time windows. (Currently these tools allow users only two options—to keep everything, or delete everything all at once—but bit-literate users may prefer to automatically delete all files older than a certain number of days.)
- Future forwarding: This allows users to forward bits into the future. The idea was pioneered by Gootodo.com, the first bit-literate todo list, which allows users to e-mail todos to future days. It's the converse of the time window; instead of deleting bits after a certain amount of time, future forwarding hides bits for a certain duration before bringing them back to the user's attention.
- Time-based filing: Tools should get better at filing bits by user-defined time periods. Despite its many features, iPhoto has no two-level storage system and thus requires a separate application—iPhoto Library—to set one up artificially. iPhoto, Picasa, and other relevant applications should give users full control over the time periods in which they file their bits. (Automated filing is not the answer. iPhoto can automatically organize photos by time, but only based on the metadata encoded in the photos. But metadata can be wrong, as in the case of a scanned image of a much older item.)
- Timeout: Some bitstreams should have finite life spans by default and require active, manual renewal after a certain duration or number of iterations. Today's tools allow users only one way to open a new bitstream: subscribing forever until the user actively unsubscribes. (For example, an RSS feed lasts until it's deleted.) Tools should allow some bitstreams to lapse after a certain time, and then remind the user to renew if they wish.
– Allow advanced users to change non-essential defaults. A few years ago Mac OSX made anti-aliased text the standard across all its applications,