Fewer clicks and less frustration: reducing the cost of reaching the right folder

Helping computer users rapidly locate files in their folder hierarchies has become an important research topic in today's intelligent user interface design. This paper reports on FolderPredictor, a software system that can reduce the cost of locating files in hierarchical folders. FolderPredictor applies a cost-sensitive prediction algorithm to the user's previous file access information to predict the next folder that will be accessed. Experimental results show that, on average, FolderPredictor reduces the cost of locating a file by 50%. Another advantage of FolderPredictor is that it does not require users to adapt to a new interface, but rather meshes with the existing interface for opening files on the Windows platform.