"Save for Later" Has No Later

Join "Interface Studies" to help make more videos. Your support keeps new content coming. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqv7gk4p_rB4nRz0j7B5yFA/join Almost every app today has a bookmark button. Almost none of them has a later. This video follows the save-for-later pattern from a 1983 study of office desks, through the browser's bookmarks bar and the hidden menu that outlived it, to the Watch Later lists we never open. -------------------------- Subscribe on Substack: https://interfacestudies.substack.com/ Happy to jump on a call if it'd be useful: design strategy, experience design, critique, feedback. https://intro.co/salehkayyali Elsewhere: X: https://x.com/mskayyali BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/mskayyali.com --------------------------- CHAPTERS [0:00] The ribbon and the promise [1:32] The desk: finding and reminding [2:20] The browser had both answers [4:32] The failure, measured [5:19] Cause one: nothing arrives [6:39] Cause two: the save already paid you [7:50] Cause three: the wanting decays [11:00] Why nothing gets fixed [12:27] Designing for later [16:05] A note on AI [16:46] The second job FURTHER READING: - How do people organize their desks? (1983): https://ia601504.us.archive.org/26/items/perm1_20220428_0403/Howdesks.pdf - Information Archiving with Bookmarks (1998): https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/public_user/RMB/papers/p23.pdf - Out of sight and out of mind: Bookmarks are created but not used (2021): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0961000620949652 - Highbrow Films Gather Dust (2009):https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/07-099_00df6c8e-2b29-43ff-8c7a-55bfe3906726.pdf - Doing It Now or Later (1999): https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~jandreon/Econ264/papers/O'Donoghue%20Rabin%20AER%201999.pdf - Saving-Enhanced Memory (2015):https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614559285 - When Online Content Disappears (Pew Research, 2024): https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/ - An Article Has A Lifespan Of 37 Days (Fast Company, 2013): https://www.fastcompany.com/3020946/an-article-has-a-lifespan-of-37-days-and-other-findings-from-pocket - My save to read it later habits (Medium, 2013; the Pocket figures): https://medium.com/@davidcafor/my-save-to-read-it-later-habits-dddaee4175f0 - New Gmail now generally available (Google, 2018; snooze): https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2018/07/new-gmail-ga.html - Save it for Later (Slack help docs): https://slack.com/help/articles/13453851074067-Save-it-for-Later - New Feature: Reminders (Raindrop blog): https://blog.raindrop.io/new-feature-reminders-a2d260408b74/ — help doc: https://help.raindrop.io/reminders - Reviewing Your Highlights (Readwise docs): https://docs.readwise.io/readwise/docs/faqs/reviewing-highlights - mymind: https://mymind.com/ — Serendipity: https://mymind.helpscoutdocs.com/article/44-rediscovering-things-with-serendipity