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Consistently different

— By Paul McGowan —
It's amazing how difficult it is to achieve simple clarity in anything. We all admire a simple easy to understand operation of a product that seems so obvious to us when it works just the way we expect. As a designer I can tell you that's perhaps the most difficult challenge of all: making something seem simple. And keeping your music library simple, easy to navigate and consistent is an "easy" task if you take a few minutes and examine how you think. I did that exercise only after I built my library and found it to be hard to navigate. For example, I started out listing everything by last name first, followed by the first name. I did this consistently and it was a mess. The first problem I ran into was "The". I listed The Animals as Animals, The. That didn't work well - but I sure didn't want to list them as The Animals because when it came time to scroll through my library I'd get a long list in the T's that didn't make any sense:
  • The Animals
  • The Beatles
  • The Rolling Stones
OK, so I was able to add a rule set to ignore "The" and life was good (most programs today have that rule set as automatic). Except now I had the problem I mentioned yesterday. Boys, Beach for Beach Boys. I don't think Boys, Beach but I do think Beethoven. I also don't think McCartney, Paul - I think Paul McCartney. So my library starts out with a consistent rule set that is different for the type of music.
  • Classical music: Last name, first name.
  • Popular music: First name, Last Name
  • Groups: just as they appear on their album
You don't have to do it this way - but you do need to think it through how your brain works. Then be consistent.

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