Memorable Files
Find documents with a glance
By Lisa Scanlon

Finding a particular folder or document on a computer can be frustrating. People often find themselves searching through directories filled with thousands of files distinguishable only by their names. Ruth Rosenholtz, principal research scientist in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, believes that searching would be much faster if each file were assigned a unique image along with a name. “Humans have a wonderful set of visual skills, but a lot of user interfaces don’t take advantage of that,” she says.

Rosenholtz and colleagues at the University of Southern California and ESC Entertain­ment in Alameda, CA, designed a pro­gram that automatically generates an icon—a unique squiggle, perhaps, or a complex geometric pattern—for every file that’s created. (Files with similar names are assigned similar shapes; all other files get randomly assigned images.) The researchers then tested their “visual icons” to see whether they were more effective than standard software icons coupled with names. In one study, subjects found files 30 percent faster when they used the new interface. Two days after another study, the researchers asked several subjects to sketch and describe icons that they remembered; all gave descriptions and made drawings that were recognizable.

The researchers note that it will be hard to commercialize the technology. After all, its most obvious application is as an enhancement to a computer’s operating system, so it may not win mainstream adoption without promotion from Microsoft and Apple. The technology could, however, be attractive to smaller software companies, whose applications might use visual icons in their own lists of files. Regardless of what happens in the marketplace, however, Rosenholtz will continue to explore what, exactly, makes images recognizable and distinguishable.