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Scenario

Jim is a senior taking 6.033. If time permits, he usually does the assigned reading ahead of time. On Monday night February 6, he is sitting in his room reading the “Worse is Better” paper (http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html) linked on the course website to prepare for tomorrow’s recitation.

He comes across a sentence ‘Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses’, and he thinks it is a cool saying. He is intrigued to highlight that sentence and put comments along with it. He knows that WebAnnotator allows him to make notes directly on webpages, so he goes to WebAnnototar.com and loads the ‘Worse Is Better’ webpage. He scrolls to that interesting sentence he found and highlights it. Then he attaches some comments to the highlighted sentence. Later on as he reads he also highlighted some other important points in the webpage.

In order to be able to refer to his notes later, he saved the annotated webpage online in WebAnnotator. To refresh his memory the night before recitation, he returns to his annotated webpage in WebAnnotator.com to review the high-level ideas covered in the paper.

Unlike Jim, Sam is having a hectic schedule. He does not have time to read the assigned reading before recitation. An hour before recitation time, he makes an emergency call to his friend Jim for help. Jim tells Sam that he has taken some notes that could be helpful. So Jim goes to WebAnnotator.com, pulls out his annotated webpage and shares it with Sam.

Sam finds most of Jim’s comments helpful, except towards the end of the page, he does not quite understand what the words ‘Common Lisp’ are referring to. So he searched online and find a good article explaining what Lisp is on Wikipedia. He then pasted a brief sentence from Wikipedia explaining what 'Lisp' is and attaches it to the words, while keeping Jim’s annotations.

Design 1

The core of this design is the 'Editing Page' (collaborative and non-collaborative). It lays out the original webpage as the starting point for annotation (or editing) and editing is done directly on the page. It divides the whole page into sections, and allows multiple users to collaboratively edit a page as long as no two of them are editing the same section at the same time.

1.

Homepage.

It provides a text box at the center for user to paste the url of the webpage that they want to annotate. Then they need to hit 'Enter' or press 'Load'.

It also provides a 'Login' button that pops up a login prompt (not shown). When logged in, the user's username will be shown at the top right corner instead.

2.

Private Editing Page.

User (logged in as Jim) loads a webpage and is shown the editing page. The user is able to edit the webpage in the editing page. 

The top bar is showing the original webpage's URL, username, and three buttons: 'Save' (shown below), 'Reload' (discard all changes) and 'Share' (shown below).

The webpage being annotated is automatically divided up into sections (they can be high-level divs, for example).

Mouse behavior and actions user can take:

  1. Hovering over a section: A cross is shown at the top right corner of the section to afford 'deletion of the section'. 
  2. Hovering over section boundary: Cursor changes to 'move cursor' to afford 'moving the section around'. 
  3. Hovering over text: Cursor changes to 'text cursor'.
  4. Clicking on text: A row of buttons is shown just above the cursor to provide editing capabilities: 'insert text' and 'add notes'. 
  5. Selecting text: A row of buttons is shown just above the cursor to provide editing capabilities: 'add notes', 'hyperlink', 'highlight' and 'change color'.
  6. Clicking on an image: A button is shown just above the cursor to provide editing capability: 'add notes'. 

2.1

Save Dialog Box. 

Pops up when 'Save' is clicked on the above screen.
Allows user to name the annotated webpage and save.
Clicking 'Save' brings the user to the screen below (dashboard).

Share Dialog Box.

Two share modes:

  • 'Publish': Allow invited users to see your annotated webpage, but they cannot modify it.
  • 'Collaborate': Allow invited users to collaborate in editing (described in screen 4, Collaborative Editing).

3.

Dashboard Page.

This is user's dashboard, showing thumbnails of all the user's saved annotated webpages. Below each thumbnail, name and access control of the page is shown. It also offers 'delete' by showing a cross at top right during mouse over.

4.

Collaborative Editing Page.

The editing capabilities provided are very similar to the private editing page, with one difference: The sections are not editable if other users are already editing in those sections, and are labeled with the editing user's username. (Sections are divided automatically when the page is loaded into WebAnnotator, as described before.) For example, when Jim and Sam are editing the page collaboratively, if Sam is selecting text in the middle section, the section and its subsection (containing the image) are not editable to Jim. But Jim can edit any other sections.

Analysis
Learnability:

When the webpage is presented to the user, it tries to show affordances for editing by displaying section borders and the 'close' button on mouse over, but it is not obvious what editing capabilities are provided or what kind of annotation the user can do, because the user has to click or select text in order for the editing buttons to show. A panel at the top or the side containing all possible editing buttons may improve learnability.

In the collaborative editing mode, it may not be easy for the user to figure out exactly which part is not editable due to other's actions on the same page.

The design does not provide any help information that informs user where to get help.

Efficiency:

Making edit buttons just above cursor allows user to select an editing tool faster. It works especially well if the user is constantly switching editing tools. On the other hand, it may get tedious when the user is only using highlighting, and has to select the highlight tool every time after selecting text.

Safety:

Design 2

Design 3

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