Visual metaphors assist busy readers, learners

Posted on April 26, 2010 Written by

See this in the news:

 


Announcing the availability of the first implementation of the Knowledge Ferret open source project.

The knowledgeferret.com adds a compelling visual metaphor to the document reader to help busy readers to make sense of large and complicated documents. The Productivity Commissions recent report into the Not-For-Profit sector in Australia is being used as a test of this technology.

The “Knowledge Ferret” is David’s third exploration of adding visual metaphor to large documents. The first was the Visual PMBOK(r) Guide – jospar.com and the second earlier work was for NSW Health’s Protocols and Procedures for Aged Care Assessment

In the “Knowledge Ferret” the visual metaphor is formed by the index on the left hand side of the document. It shows the topic that is currently in focus and the context of this topic. While the user can’t ever see all the topics in a document at one time, if ever a topic is visible, it is always in the same place in relation to all other topics. This means that as the user interacts and explores the document they are simultaneously building a mental map of the whole document.

While a user is reading a topic, the most similar topics in the rest of the document are highlighted in blue. These blue sections are like a ‘radar’ view into the rest of the document and makes connections between the current topic and other topics, possibly many chapters apart.

The search box returns its results using the same dynamic index using green highlighting. The search function is not designed to be exhaustive, but rather to guide the user to the top seven topics that most closely relate to the search term.

The “Most Read” link just under the search box highlights the most frequently read topics in a dark orange colour.

Using the “Share / Save” link, users may comment on via twitter, facebook and a dozen other social media sites about any topic in the document.

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Knowledge Ferret

Posted on March 20, 2010 Written by

kfA novel way of applying adult learning and human-centric design principles to the presentation of large bodies of knowledge.

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CSS Properties (on one page)

Posted on July 12, 2009 Written by

Check out this persuasive demonstration of CSS properties using the (On on Page) information design pattern:  CSS Sandbox

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SPARQL on one page

Posted on July 11, 2009 Written by

Check out this very informative page using the (On on Page) information design pattern:  SPARQL FAQ

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The Lightbox Clones Matrix (On One Page)

Posted on July 4, 2009 Written by

Ozh has created a Lightbox Clones Matrix selection tool that exemplifies many of the qualities of the (On One Page) design pattern.

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(On One Page)

Posted on June 26, 2009 Written by

Announcing (On One Page)
(On One Page) – is an information design pattern aimed at assisting people to master best practice guidelines, policies, procedures and bodies of knowledge.  I have created some examples:

  1. New South Wales Health Department’s, Aged Care Assessment Guidelines (On One Page) .  This is sourced from a 144 page book!
  2. The Project Management Institutes’s, PMBOK Guide – Fourth Edition (On One Page). This is a 350+ page book.

Principles
The (On One Page) design pattern has the following features:

  1. The user is presented with a one-page visual metaphor of all the concepts contained in the book, manual or “body of knowledge”. In the case of a book the index may be an adequate visual metaphor.
  2. The one-page visual metaphor:
    • is interactive
    • gives each concept a fixed position in relation to all other concepts
    • allows focus by only showing a subset of all the concepts at one time
  3. The concept in focus is gold coloured and “see also” concepts are colored light blue.
  4. For concepts with associated text, the text may be displayed in a popup window.

By means of these design decisions, users may

  1. See “both the wood and the trees” simultaneously. The wood is the whole body of knowledge and the trees are individual concepts.
  2. See the interconnections between concepts.
  3. Use spacial as well as verbal memory to master concepts and their interrelationships.
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