世論 What Japan Thinks

I don’t know if it’s just the sort of people I work with, but many people in the office seem to have half their Windows desktop strewn with icons. However, this recent survey from iShare into organising desktop icons found that such behaviour was the exception rather than the rule.

Demographics

Between the 30th of April and the 10th of May 2010 537 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.3% of the sample were male, 31.3% in their twenties, 32.2% in their thirties, and 36.5% in their forties.

I try to keep my icons down to under two columns on the left and just one or two on the right.

Another interesting related subject I should look out for is the use of tray icons – again, most of my colleagues have well over 15 on their machine, including default informational icons like the two touchpad-related ones our standard notebook computers come shipped with. I turn off all the ones I can as they are just a distraction, on the whole.

Research results

Q1: Is your own room neat and tidy? (Sample size=537)

	All	Male N=297	Female N=240
Very neat and tidy	8.2%	10.4%	5.4%
Reasonably neat and tidy	32.25	31.3%	33.3%
Not very neat and tidy	36.5%	35.0%	38.3%
Not at all neat and tidy	23.1%	23.2%	22.9%

Q2: On the computer you use the most, about how many desktop icons do you have? (Sample size=537)

	All	Male N=297	Female N=240
None or one	8.0%	10.8%	4.6%
Two to nine	29.2%	27.3%	31.7%
Ten to nineteen	31.3%	29.3%	33.8%
Twenty to twenty-nine	18.1%	16.8%	19.6%
Thirty or more	13.4%	15.8%	10.4%

Q3: About how often do you tidy up your desktop icons? (Sample size=537)

	All	Male N=297	Female N=240
Every day (to SQs)	5.4%	2.5%	7.7%
Two days to a week (to SQs)	4.8%	5.7%	3.8%
One week to one month (to SQs)	11.0%	12.1%	9.6%
One to three months (to SQs)	20.9%	22.6%	18.8%
Three to six months (to SQs)	14.0%	11.8%	16.7%
Six months to a year (to SQs)	16.9%	15.2%	19.2%
Less than once a year (to SQs)	13.0%	10.8%	15.8%
Never	15.3%	16.5%	13.8%

Q3SQ1: How do you usually tidy up your desktop icons? (Sample size=455)

	All	Male N=248	Female N=207
Manually	93.6%	95.6%	91.3%
OS-supplied icon tidying function	4.2%	2.4%	6.3%
Free software	1.5%	1.2%	1.9%
Paid software	0.2%	0.4%	0.0%
Other	0.4%	0.4%	0.5%

Q3SQ2: When you’re busy on your computer, have you ever wanted to tidy up your desktop icons? (Sample size=455)

	All	Male N=248	Female N=207
Often so	11.9%	14.9%	8.2%
Sometimes so	36.7%	37.5%	35.7%
Never	51.4%	47.6%	56.0%

Q4: Do you have a set order for your desktop icons, by usage, type or whatever? (Sample size=537)

	All	Male N=297	Female N=240
Yes, set order	31.8%	34.0%	29.2%
Sort of	44.9%	42.8%	47.5%
No	23.3%	23.2%	23.3%

Cross-referencing with Q1, those with tidy rooms were more likely to have tidy desktops too!