> Imagine if instead of having files/folders to (teach,confuse) Grandma, we simply had a time-based system of references. If Time was a principle unit of information that a user was required to understand as an abstract concept, I feel that it would result in far better user interfaces.
How would it be easier when I, let alone my Grandma, can't remember if I did something last week or the week before last? It seems it puts a higher cognitive load on the user.
Yeah I actually don't think the human brain accounts very well for time. Like despite a decade has passed I don't feel as if time has moved very much for me. Despite the fact that people age, it does not seem an inbuilt thing to recognize your age. It just seems to be something that happens to your body.
Thinking a bit more about it I don't think the brain accounts for time in long term memory, it does a better job in short term memory. That's why a musician can use time and we can't use it very well for stuff we stored a week ago.
You think its better to have a situation where you can't find where something is, nor even approximate it, but you can generally approximate when something is, and grope around it? Because I don't think thats the case - if you can't remember where you put it, its not helpful to grope around the location of where you think you might've put it - or at least, lets say this: it might be more helpful to group around time, than space, when dealing with abstract ideas.
A user interface can be derived to help you do that groping with Time. User interfaces have been derived to help you do groping with form or place (Spotlight, cf.), too, but I wager Time-groping is more effective. But that could just be the musician in me...
How would it be easier when I, let alone my Grandma, can't remember if I did something last week or the week before last? It seems it puts a higher cognitive load on the user.