Re: PiggyBank install feedback

From: David Huynh <dfhuynh_at_csail.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 09:09:43 -0500

David Karger wrote:

> Michael McDougall wrote:
>
>> Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
>>
>>> Michael McDougall wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> - The metaphor seems a little discontinuous to me. When I click the
>>>> "RDF coin" the animation (nice, BTW) shows RDF coins going into a
>>>> slot--it looks like the RDF (coin) is being stored in my DB (piggy
>>>> bank). But then on the next page I find out this isn't the case--I
>>>> still need to save things before the data is *really* stored in my
>>>> piggy bank. I could see how people may assume the data is stored in
>>>> the bank already and "Save" means save the item to a file.
>>>
> It's a bit strange actually. When I view a web page in my browser, do
> I have sense that the page is "saved" as a result? Why should viewing
> the "rdf-version" of a web page be any different? Perhaps there should
> be no animation at all when I "change perspective" and instead the
> coin-in-slot should happen during the save..

Well, for Web pages, we do have bookmarking and saving locally (in
Firefox, File -> Save Page As).

Perhaps this is what should happen in future version of Piggy Bank:

- If a Web page voluntarily offers RDF (as RDF/A, GRDDL, or through some
conventional <link>), then Piggy Bank automatically retrieves that data
and augments the page with semantic elements (e.g., semantic-sensitive
context menus and such). A Web page usually does not contain too much
data, and so this process of retrieval and augmentation hopefully does
not negatively affect the user's browsing experience. Good things just
happen. The user doesn't even have to switch view just yet.

- If a Web page does not offer RDF, then Piggy Bank indicates whether
there is any applicable scraper but does not automatically proceed to
scrape. The user has to invoke the scraping operation, which will take
some time.

- If there is no RDF and no scraper, (or if the user so wants), the user
can pull out Piggy Bank's do-it-yourself scraping UI and perform the
just-in-time scraping.

These 3 levels of integration hopefully will make clear the experiential
distinction between a SW-friendly Web site and a SW-unfriendly Web site.
Users are hopefully driven over to SW-friendly sites, making demand on
more sites to offer RDF.


Saving into "My Piggy Bank" is then a separate issue altogether. Saving
will be the combo of bookmarking and Save Page As. It will be used for
both remembering the things you have encountered earlier so to have a
convenient way to quickly get back to it, and for capturing the current
state of that thing lest it might be changed by the original site in the
future.

David

>>> Hmmm, good point actually. Hmmm maybe we could have the coin fall
>>> from the sky and pile up instead and having the "save all content in
>>> this page" (see below) use the 'coins in the slot' one. Warning, I
>>> think we are approaching very fast my abilities as an icon designer
>>> btw :-)
>>
>> How about this?
>> When you collect you could show the coins going into a pocket.
>> When you save you could show the coins going from your pocket into
>> the piggy bank.
>>
>> The metaphor's not perfect: coins in my pocket don't disappear if I
>> fail to put them in my piggy bank right away. But it does kind of fit
>> the way I accumulate coins.
>>
>> Michael
>
Received on Sun Oct 30 2005 - 14:04:03 EST