It might be useful for us to have notions of archetypal users of Hypothes.is. These serve as a shorthand to talk about the needs of different kinds of user, and help us to write focused user stories.
Please help us to complete and refine these descriptions.
This archetype is characterized by personal objectives. The interactions are limited to themselves, and are dominated by organizational and note-taking tasks.
The researcher takes private field notes via personal, “Only Me” visible annotations on the web, and also to use tags to help organize those annotations and bookmark and classify web resources.
Examples: students, scientists, journalists.
This archetype is characterized by group objectives. The interactions are primarily with a team of others in a private group, usually < 10 members in size.
The Copy-editor works collaboratively with others to proof, critique and provide structured feedback on documents, manuscripts, code and other works. The annotations and notes that are made are likely tagged in a way that indicates the type of suggestion: Spelling Correction, Grammar Correction, Question, Remove, Insert, Suggested rewording, Disagree, Agree, etc. Some of these could be coupled with built in actions, like an “accept” feature to modify the underlying source text with a Spelling Correction for instance. We also imagine a “Resolve” flag that would allow copy-editing suggestions, once acted upon, to be removed from view in a way that signals back to their creator in case of disagreement.
The copy-editing archetype underlies the peer-review use case, and would enable the workflow between authors, editors and reviewers. Co-authors also of course use copy-editing in the course of working collaboratively on a document.
Examples: co-authors, editors, reviewers.
This archetype is defined primarily by public objectives. The interactions are primarily with peers in a public group of undefined, or unlimited size, and take place over an unbounded time frame (i.e. the long tail of post-publication commentary).
The commenter wants to engage with their peers to discuss the content of the source document. They may want to ask questions, weigh in with a personal or professional opinion, disagree about public policy, petition their government for change, crack a joke, or simply commiserate with others about shared context. Similar to the use case for Reddit, Hacker News, Twitter and other social media platforms-- but folded onto the web wherever they are.
This archetype also serves authors that may want to footnote their own works-- but in a way that could also provide the seeds for further discussion with their readers.
Examples: students, citizens, authors.
Wants to build other annotation services or integrate their applications with annotation. Often they work providing solutions for all of the users archetypes above.