Collections

Collections are a design pattern for use by applications. They allow content items to be grouped together and organized.

Collections is a generic name that can be altered according to the context. A photos app might call them "Albums", while a notes app could call them "Notebooks", for example.

Participants

WilliamJonMcCann, AllanDay, JakubSteiner

Objectives

• Assign content items to collections, both individually and as sets.
• Assign content items to collections, as a part of the import process.
• Browse collections.
• Edit collection names.
• Remove content items from collections. Move them between collections.
• Be quick and simple to use.
• Design pattern should be applicable to Documents and Photos. Could have implications for similar apps, but is not intended to be identical across different application types.

Use cases:

• Organize newly imported photos into a series of albums.
• Place a set of papers into subject-specific collections.

Relevant Art

Google Drive

Filesystem-like model:

• Folders can be nested.
• Files can be placed in a single folder.
• Folders can be empty.
• Folder trees are browsed using a sidebar.

Google Keep

Classic tag-based model:

• Notes can have multiple tags.
• Main view shows all content items.
• Tags act as filters (accessible from a sidebar).
• Tags don't have to have notes attached to them.

Tomboy

• Notebooks act as filters in the search window.
• Each note can be placed in a single notebook (or not have a notebook).
• Notebooks can be empty.

iPhoto

Flickr

• Main view is a timeline of all photos. A separate view allows browsing albums.
• Photos can belong to multiple albums.
• A special mode is used for album editing. This allows adding photos to albums through drag and drop.

Shotwell

• Main view shows all photos.
• Uses "tags" as opposed to albums.

Discussion

• An view showing all content items is good to have, particularly if it shows recent activity.
• Ability to quickly select multiple content items is important for organising content into collections. Density of items on display could be a factor here.
• Important for Photos (maybe documents too):
  • Select by date.
  • Add to album during import.
  • Manual ordering of photos in an album (or set the order as an album property).
  • Export or share an album.

Tentative Design

Things that Photos needs and are missing from this design:

• Select by date in Photos.
• Automatic albums by date?
• Assign collections during import.
• Manual ordering inside an album.

See 705708

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