In the Social experience design chatroom @serious_fun wrote:
Bookmarks is one more of those design elements where from personal experience I feel “its all wrong”, but its not easy to pinpoint factors. Over the years I have built a large collection, neatly arranged in deep hierarchies, sharing across devices via firefox etc. But I have found myself gradually using them less and less, to the point of forgetting them altogether. One factor is probably the purposeful demotion of bookmark functionality by the browser gatekeepers. Hidden several clicks away in ‘clean’ interfaces, users are encouraged to use the search bar to type again and again what they want, which is then helped with predictive autocomplete etc. (designs that earn google and indirectly mozilla money rather than help the user get on top). But there is probably more at play. For example the lack or some sort of “reminder” function. One way to reinforce using one’s own classification of the internet content via bookmarks would have been an integration with rss. So the bookmark manager could automatically indicate if the website where you bookmarked something has something new. But of course rss was also the enemy of the adtech empire and demoted as well. Now only vivaldi seems to support discovery.
I think there’s a deeper issue. The web brought us in a new information era and we are still learning to cope with that.
We became information hoarders
We say the web has enshittified, became a Corporate Web. But there’s still too much quality information out there. So much so that in our daily habits we have become like “information snackers”, grazing the rich meadows of the web. And when we encounter good quality stuff that is aligned with our interests, we file it away and become like true “information hoarders”. We think “If I ever get to address that interest, then this information will sure come in handy, and I will process the many valuable points in this article”. But for most of the stuff, that time never comes, and the information gathering has only added a kind of pressure, a cluttering of the mind where we feel discontent about the inefficient library organization we created. This information hoarding is addictive, and the info gathering compulsive.
In addition to that, I agree that any bookmark manager I’ve ever seen felt incomplete, not sufficient, or just not it. I think in some ways in the product development they dropped the ball, or bookmarking just wasn’t core domain. Web 2.0 gave vendors an incentive not to give us the power tools. “Come to our platform instead”. But now with note-taking tools I have similar thoughts about their usefulness for me. I think we want those tools to have a close alignment with how our memory models / strategies work, and offer ‘seamless extension’ support in just the right areas. Which is so personal that for hardly anyone the existing tools are a perfect fit.
So I think there are some nice and very interesting improvements to be made, which are research areas for Social coding movement in her quest to “Reimagine social”. Think of Semmy for instance.
Mindful just-in-time information
In another approach, more on the socio-philosophical side of things, SX is focused on how to personally deal with the information overload that bombards us. And here the Mindulness principle kicks in, and tells us to “Just relax, let it go”. Don’t hoard the information. Be content that you cannot follow it all. And that, should the time come, you fill find the information you need. Perhaps not that one resource, but other quality info that is abundantly out there.
I was once in a management role and received hundreds of emails a day. I thought to categorize it all and place in a hierarchy. Took me 2 full days. To never use the hierarchy afterwards. A single inbox and search are most productive for me. Perhaps imperfect recall, but good enough recall. Recently I closed the backlog of 404 open tabs in my laptop browser, of ‘things to process’. What a relief. They accrued in a couple months. Right now I have 100 or so tabs open again. In my mobile phone there’s probably well over a 1,000 waiting. On Github and Codeberg I have a gazillion starred repo’s as bookmarks. I have a long list of favorites on hacker news. Etcetera.
Simple solutions still exist
Under SX philosophy the slogan “Simple solutions still exist” refers to the realization that all the common wisdom, common knowledge, common sense, and life experience is out there, to solve our wicked problems. The info isn’t the issue. It is taking people’s 2 cents and adding them up to amount to something, where the shoe hurts most.