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Inbox zero is now a rare occurrence, only made possible by abusing Gmail's snooze function. My phone, laptop, and clouds are full.
Using personal finance analogies, should I:
- Reduce my spending (unsubscribe, stop consuming feeds)?
- Pay back my debt (consume the saved items)? Perhaps using the debt-snowball method?
- Get more credit (file storage) so that I can spend (save items) more?
- Declare bankruptcy (delete everything)?
For example, these are all the apps pre-installed on iOS:
- App Store: Software retailer
- Books: Book
- Calculator: Calculator
- Calendar: Calendar
- Camera: Camera
- Clock: Clock
- Compass: Compass
- Contacts: Rolodex
- FaceTime: Face-to-face interaction
- Files: Filing cabinet
- Find My: ?
- Fitness: Workout log
- Flashlight: Flashlight
- Health: Health record
- Home: Home
- iTunes Store: Music retailer
- Mail: Mail
- Maps: Maps
- Measure: Tape measure
- Messages: SMS
- Music: Music player
- News: Newspaper
- Notes: Notebook
- Phone: Telephone
- Photos: Picture
- Podcasts: Radio
- Reminders: To-do list
- Safari: ?
- Settings: Buttons, switches, sliders, knobs
- Shortcuts: ?
- Stocks: Newspaper
- Tips: User guide
- Translate: Bilingual dictionary
- TV: Television
- Voice Memos: Tape recorder
- Wallet: Wallet
Although the one-to-one equivalence between real-world concepts and apps may seem intuitive to those who have experienced the former (older generations), they appear completely arbitrary to those who haven't (newer generations). Keep in mind that most kids have no idea that the save symbol represents a floppy disk.
Unfortunately, such short-sighted design decisions often remain unchallenged. For instance, most people never asked themselves why we ended up with the arguably inferior QWERTY keyboard layout. Likewise, most of us have accepted the arbitrary boundaries we set between apps.
What if this skeuomorphic way of thinking had wider implications than simply facilitating the transition from the analog to the digital world? What if the very idea of apps was the single biggest mistake in the field of software design? How powerful would software be if we directly interacted with data in a general purpose way, rather than being constrained by the limitations of real-world objects in a domain specific way?