This week I've been interviewing users of our product. As always, I'm struck by the ways in which the words we use to describe existing (or wanted) features can fail to capture implicit -- or tacit -- understanding.
Suppose a user says, "I want to be able to export my annotations." That sounds straightforward. But I've spoken with users who mean very different things when they say that. The stories I've heard include:
I want to export annotations as JSON so that I can write tools to mine and analyze them.
I want to export annotations as CSV so that I can chart them.
I want to export annotations as HTML so that I can review them.
I want to export annotations as a serialization of the Open Annotation Data Model so that I can exchange them with systems that speak that emerging standard.
I want to export annotations to the clipboard so that I can incorporate them into reports I am writing.
The last of these was really interesting. I hadn't been thinking of that use case as a form of export, and neither had the user who presented it to me. It came up in the course of a recorded screensharing session, conducted in Google's Hangouts on Air and archived at an unlisted YouTube URL. I asked our user to show me aspects of his workflow, including how he repurposes the material he captures using our annotation tool. At one point he switched to another annotation tool and showed me how he uses it to copy selected sets of annotations to the clipboard for reuse elsewhere.