Collaborative Activities

While cloud storage and web-based platforms have changed the way we access and organize digital information, the file management paradigm of desktop operating systems has remained virtually unchanged since the advent of the personal computer.

This speculative interface attempts to reimagine the macOS Finder from a collaboration-centered perspective, presenting the Activity Stream, a new way of browsing content being worked on within a team. Export mechanisms and an inbox view additionally provide ways of moving content between applications without dealing with a hierarchical file system.

Collaborators

  • Carl Linz
  • Silas Wolf

Tasks

  • Concept & Research
  • Prototyping
  • Interface Design

Context

  • University of Applied Sciences Potsdam

Completion

  • 2022
The Activity Stream provides a chronological overview of the work done within a shared workspace. The left column groups all modified documents by date and type, while the right column visualizes the time spent making those edits, separated by tags.
All documents and their associated services are assumed to be cloud-based and collaborative.
The stream makes it possible to retrace the team’s work and locate documents based on time.
Files downloaded or received are collected in an Incoming view, from where they can be imported.
Exports configured inside an application appear in Finder’s sidebar and are kept up-to-date.
A secondary Browser view allows documents to be filtered by tags, applications and people.