The way we currently have it has worked for at least 30 years and takes at most, a few seconds of explaining and everyone I've ever met understands the file metaphor.

There's this anecdotal story about how people in the early 80s couldn't figure out that the mouse should be intentionally rolled around on the table without a demonstration but once shown it was clear.

We shouldn't have some visceral animosity against something if it takes non-zero time to learn; especially if we are talking about under 30 seconds.

Many major common things take months of time to figure out; literacy, basic arithmetic, cooking, any mode of transportation, relationships, temper, finance, and time management; infants even take a significant time to figure out sleeping.

Anyway, what we have is fine - no further simplification required.

If we followed that idea though (keep it as it has been for 30 years) then Google Drive or iOS would have you browsing through hierarchical folders like Windows Explorer.

That would be wonderful!

I've had many non technical people ask me how to create folders in those systems...

People can live with a flat file structure; Early versions of DOS were like this. Maybe we should go back to line editors too... So much prettier and simplified! No menus or dialogs! You don't even see a pageful of content at once! Just a blinking cursor and some brief commands. No messy interface...

(I can unfortunately actually see this happening)

It's a definite balance though, is my point. You have to make these determinations all the time while making consumer-facing software.

For example, I'm making a 'Newsfeed for Twitter' right now (top tweets people you follow have liked/shared) and people I show it to want keyword muting so the feed isn't dominated by Trump news. From a UX perspective I really resist adding keyword muting. Instead I added a 'Tailored' mode that shows top items your friends are talking about that aren't being talked about across the network.

Similarly I had "Top -> 12 Hours | Day | Week" and to remove the "12 Hours | Day | Week" submenu, I created a feed that algorithmically balances popularity and recency.

So I'm saying these choices are ever-present when making software. Some moves like Apple removing the 'Escape' key seem like random silliness but some hard choices are important when making a good product.

I admire your effort here but I really think that such concerns were not shared equally.

Stupid and direct interfaces that "any rank amateur could do" seem to catch on pretty well.

Regardless, I sincerely wish you the best in your project. Send me a link when it's ready and I'd love to take it for a spin.

That would be amazing. As it is now, I have to search for stuff and I no longer have a clear picture where stuff is and just how much stuff I have. Therefore, when I'm searching for a document and it does not come up, I'm not sure if it's because it doesn't exist, or just because I did a wrong query.

Yes, an explorer.exe interface for Google Drive would be a huge win. That's also why I avoid using it, and keep everything I can in Dropbox instead.

I think no.

I think they changed because search became affordable enough to become a valid strategy, not because some genius figured out people are confused by folders.

It changed the up-front effort in FILING for a greater but later effort in FINDING (assuming keyword search).

To compensate, of course, users can invest a greater upfront effort in NAMING and TAGGING.

Several decades ago, I made filing mostly go away by creating files in the directories in which they would eventually be filed. This requires the ability to create nested subfolders, without which no substantial filing system is viable.

There's probably an order of magnitude at which hierarchical filing systems become the only rational approach (depending on the material). It might be 1,000 in some cases, or 10,000 in most cases, and maybe 100,000 in a few cases.

At least, that's how it works for me.....