Sorry that I'm harping on the same subject again. But I feel there's a need to bring this up again.
I find myself using Logos in 2 different ways:
1. Passage search/ Word Study/ Reference etc. For this, the current functions serve it excellently.
2. Reading. I've got so many books that I'm finding it hard to remember which books I have not finished reading. It just get lost in the hundreds of books.
Also, sometimes during a search, I would go straight for a certain resource/ monograph. If I know the name of the resource, it's easy to find. If I forgot the name (which happens to me sometimes), then again, it gets lost in the hundreds of books.
I'm wondering if there's someway of improving the GUI (maybe for Logos 5) to make things even easier. I'm thinking along the line of an actual bookshelf searching. Very much like how I would access a bookshelf. Some possibilities:
1. Marking certain books as "current reading list" or sorts - so I can access them easier. This is how I read - I have lots of physical books, but books that are currently on my reading list sit on a separate book shelf (or my bedside table).
2. Collapsing books within a collection (e.g. WBC, NICOT/NICNT etc). I open up the library tag and every single book appears. I wonder if all within a same series can be made collapsible, then expanded again when clicked to reveal all the books within that collection.
3. GUI. I think this requires some creativity. If it can be designed to be just like a physical book shelf, it can improve user experience significantly. I don't mean the bookshelf Apple designs for their bookshelf GUI (just books sitting on a shelf). It has to be more functional than that - as functional as it is visual.
At the moment, Logos is excellent in doing detailed and extensive searches. That doesn't have to change (ie the engine). But it's still designed from a computer user's point of view, not a reader's point of view.
My suggestion to the development team (if you think it's feasible to look into this) - do a number of Bible Study searches/ sermon preparations etc - using physical books in a library. See the workflow of how one would search for books and do study - including how one would open up books for study (like in the good old days). Then see if there's anything that can be incorporated into the Logos GUI to make it more user friendly. The way we used to do studies is certainly time consuming, and that's not the way we want to go (ie. backwards). But there are some elements that actually make things easier from the "old ways". If the old and new ways can be incorporated, I think we have something very different. Again, I'm not an expert in creativity. But it certainly lies in the creativity department. Maybe something for Logos 5...
