Overview

As a film aficionado, I am particular that my collection of movies stays organized. The organizing system for the film collection is influenced by the storage, file size, file type and source of the movie. It involves several kinds of interactions-Keeping up-to-date with the latest releases, maintaining a list of the movies that need to be added and deleted, finding the sources to acquire the movies, categorizing the folders, naming the files and updating the database whenever required. In order to facilitate this workflow, it is imperative to establish a robust set of designing principles for the organizing system.

What resources are being used?
On a computer the movies are represented by their corresponding digital file. Thus, the resources in this particular organizing system are the digital film files. These resources could have varied formats like AVI, MPEG or the WMV. Thus, it is important to realize the compatibility of each of these files in order to avoid operation issues. Furthermore, the movies are stored on different storage devices. For example, the classics from the ‘70s and ‘80s that are stored on VHS tapes or the ‘90s movies stored on CDs require a convertor to convert to a digital file. This process is important to obtain uniform resource format so that the organizing principles can be applied to all resources, seamlessly.
Naming Conventions: The inclusion of metadata like date for the resources could aid in differentiating between similar resource names. For example, Die Hard(1988) and Die Hard(2013).

Why are the resources organized?
I have an always-increasing collection of more than 400 movies on the computer. Having an organized system of classifying these resources based upon certain criteria could be helpful in several ways. I could effectively retrieve the resources whenever I want to view these movies. The system can be viewed as a central database for several other users such as my family and friends to access the movies whenever they would want to. Furthermore, organizing the resources can also make the sharing of these resources simpler and quicker. For example, a subfolder within the movie folder named ‘Horror’ (Based of the movie Genre) can allow a friend who wishes to borrow a horror movie easily. The overall goal of organizing the resources is to allow such simple and easy interactions with the system. The intended users can be my friends, family also, so it is important that the system is designed for simplicity.

How much are the resources being organized?
At the least granular level the main folder called ‘Movies’ is branched into subfolders called ‘Genre’, ‘Decade’, ‘Cast’, ‘Director’, ‘Language’ and ‘Favorites’. Each of the subfolders is further classified. For example the Genre folder is classified as Sci-Fi, Comedy, Thriller,, Action, Period, Western, Drama, Romance, etc. Thus, organizing the folders represents the hierarchical classification in the organization system. In this way, by assigning an extrinsic static property creates a distinct method of classification of the resources.

The classification of movies should be a faceted classification. Each resource can be categorized from a different designing principle. An overlapping-genre movie like an action-drama can be classified into the ‘Action’ genre folder as well as in the ‘Drama’ genre folder. A movie like Die Hard is an 80s, 90s action-movie starring Bruce Willis and thus would be a member of all these folders.

When are the resources organized?
Once the categories of folders have been created, the organizing activity can commence once a new movie file is added to the computer. Once a movie is acquired, it is saved on to a temporary folder. The details of the movie are obtained from the web sources such as IMDB and Metacrtitic. Having obtained the metadata, the resource can be added to the respective folders. However, the ‘Favorites’ folder would get populated only when I watch the movie frequently. Thus, the resources in this organizing system are not organized when added to the system but also when are frequently accessed by the user.

Who does the organizing?
As mentioned above, I am the primary user of the system and would do the bulk of the organizing activity. However, the system is capable of catering to the other intended users such as my family or friends who wish to access the system.

Other Considerations
One important consideration while designing the system is storage. Every month, several movies release that are worthy of being added to the system. Thus, as a system designer, I need to ensure that every resource has sufficient space upon inclusion. Another consideration is maintenance. Once a movie has been viewed and doesn’t seem to be one that could be a favorite, it could be deleted. Also when a movie gets corrupted, or for some technical reasons, it doesn’t work, it needs to be deleted. Thus, operations and maintenance are two key considerations once the system is set up.