Fyle

The problem

Every messy desktop starts at the same moment: a download completes.

That file arrives with a name its sender chose, Invoice_FINAL_v3(2).pdf or Screen Shot 2021-11-05 at 5.51.47 AM.png, and from that instant it either joins an organized collection or joins the pile.

Nobody decides to have a cluttered desktop. They just never get a chance to decide otherwise.

Existing tools attack this at the wrong end, asking you to tidy up after the clutter exists. The interesting intervention is earlier, at the download itself.

What I did

Fyle was our venture concept for INFO 287, New Venture Discovery, at Berkeley. The product bet: intercept the file at arrival, and use natural language processing to give it a name a human can actually read.

The second move is grouping. Files that pile up unaccounted for usually have something in common, so Fyle examines metadata and proposes a collection rather than making you construct one.

The design constraint I cared most about was not asking anyone to change habits.

People who live in Finder should keep living in Finder, so the app surfaces a Fyle tab there for favorited and recently sorted files, rather than becoming another place you have to remember to open.

Outcome

Fyle took first place for most promising startup in the course.

The part I’d argue for beyond the grade is the framing. The product isn’t a file organizer, it’s an intervention at the one moment when a file’s fate is still cheap to change.