Dropbox Dash AMA: November 2023

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vkevinruss wrote:

I love Dropbox Paper. One of the main things I use it for is to bookmark and annotate tech-related articles and reference material. It's great because it supports three powerful tools: nested folders, markup pages, and search. I can nest folders to my hearts content, fill them with useful markup, and instantly find whatever I'm looking for. What could be better?

Dash looks great, and I was excited to see the Stacks feature for quick bookmarking and bookmark organization. Sometimes you just want to throw a bookmark in a folder and be done with it. Unfortunately, I quickly found that it's not usable for me, because the hierarchy is simply too limited. 

My question is: Why overcomplicate and constrict  a bookmarking system with "stacks", a single level of "sections", and "items"? Why not just allow unlimited nested "stacks" and "items"? I had the same issue with Microsoft OneNote, and that's why I started using Paper to begin with. I'd love to see you get rid of "sections" and allow the unlimited nesting of "stacks". I know it would involve a deeper consideration of UI design concerns, but you nailed it with Paper, and I know you can do the same with Stacks.

Thanks for listening!

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Thanks, vkevinruss! We have certainly talked a lot about how complex to make stacks and I don't think we're done iterating.

But my take is this: A stack is generally about a single cohesive thing, in my mind (for the way I use stacks) it's generally a task I'm trying to complete (maybe with some collaborators).

A single document may be in many stacks, if it is relevant to them. So a stack is a bit more flexible than a folder in that sense.

But I agree we don't let you organize and nest things into hierarchies.

I reflect on when I joined Google (~5 years ago). I was very used to storing things in folders at my previous job (Microsoft). But at Google no one (I knew) did that. People just made docs on Google docs and ... let them drift off into the ether. If they needed them they would link them into something OR rely on search to find them.

Well stacks (right now) sort of work this way too. You can search for what you need and Dash will (soon) prominently feature relevant stacks as results along with files.

Also, Dash will get more and more implicit over time, so as you work the relevant stacks will just 'be there'. [ vs making you go off and search for them ]

I know this is a different mental model than organizing all your things into folders.

But my hope is that recent breakthroughs in AI allow this to be more productive in many situations.

We have a lot of iteration and learning to do. Thanks for helping us make progress!

Geoff