How do we find personal files? The effect of OS, presentation & depth on file navigation

Folder navigation is the main way that computer users retrieve their personal files. However we know surprisingly little about navigation, particularly about how it is affected by the operating system used, the interface presentation and the folder structure. To investigate this, we asked 289 participants to retrieve 1,109 of their own active files. We analyzed the 4,948 resulting retrieval steps, i.e. moves through the hierarchical folder tree. Results show: (a) significant differences in overall retrieval time between PC and Mac that arise from different organizational strategies rather than interface design; (b) the default Windows presentation is suboptimal - if changed, retrieval time could be reduced substantially and (c) contrary to our expectations, folder depth did not affect step duration. We discuss possible reasons for these results and suggest directions for future research.