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Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

kayce.basqu.es

61–69 of 69 posts

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#61
Reminds me of http://www.telescopictext.com/ , where instead of a single slide users can click on sections that they want more details on. I used the concept myself a few years ago to create my Pathfinder character sheet (https://boppreh.com/chomsky/).

Didn't feel very useful, but it was a fun experiment and allows for some clever plays like looping "expansions", and hiding punchlines to jokes behind a click.

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#62
I really appreciate the spirit of this idea. Humanizing information is essential for learning and idea sharing.

I think the academic community could benefit greatly from this concept. Formal academic papers are confusing, but not without reason...they are standalone essays or dissertations that seek to persuade readers of a thesis based on all the evidence that an author can squeeze into a single publication. While it is understandable that these documents are long and complex, it makes it all the more difficult for less-specialized readers to consume and leverage this valuable, innovative information.

I would love to have a tool like this in the top corner of a digital academic library. Maybe instead of tldr detail, a bar like this: layman expert.

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#63

Journalism already has a mechanism for this. In a news story (as opposed to longer, narrative stories), the important news is up top, followed by background in order of importance. The interface thus becomes: stop reading when it stops being new or interesting.

Yes, the inverted pyramid can handle most cases in journalism. The example that I provide in the post (a tutorial split between 2 audiences) is an example where this UI may be useful. Granted, even that is an edge case. I think there are different, more straightforward strategies for handling split-audience tutorials. This post was just an exploration into a UI that intrigued me.

I like that use case. I'm often bored by technical books where I know some of the material but don't have the patience to find the new material. Ebooks/articles that adapt to the reader's existing knowledge would be interesting. Either via a quiz up front or marking sections you already know as you go.

Basically a form of adaptive learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_learning

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#64

Journalism already has a mechanism for this. In a news story (as opposed to longer, narrative stories), the important news is up top, followed by background in order of importance. The interface thus becomes: stop reading when it stops being new or interesting.

> Journalism already has a mechanism for this.

The most famous technique that is completely ignored by mainstream journalism. Name three popular news platforms that still apply it. I've seen one - I don't even remember which one, but it pops up on HN every now and then; it's characteristic for having a bullet-point TL;DR at the top.

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#66

Journalism already has a mechanism for this. In a news story (as opposed to longer, narrative stories), the important news is up top, followed by background in order of importance. The interface thus becomes: stop reading when it stops being new or interesting.

> Journalism already has a mechanism for this. The most famous technique that is completely ignored by mainstream journalism. Name three popular news platforms that still apply it. I've seen one - I don't even remember which one, but it pops up on HN every now and then; it's characteristic for having a bullet-point TL;DR at the top.

Firs link on th first news source I could think of: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/world/europe/uk-brexit-ec...

That article is textbook inverted pyramid.

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#67

Can there be a UI that lets readers agree/desagree on Cookies once and forever so that the popup is not shown again, and to block 'please disable adblock' popups? An, also, firmly let the website know that the user wants to stay in the mobile browser and doesn't wish to download another app just to read a 1000 words article?

Yup, it’s called an adblocker.

adblocker is a workaround.

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#68

Journalism already has a mechanism for this. In a news story (as opposed to longer, narrative stories), the important news is up top, followed by background in order of importance. The interface thus becomes: stop reading when it stops being new or interesting.

> Journalism already has a mechanism for this. The most famous technique that is completely ignored by mainstream journalism. Name three popular news platforms that still apply it. I've seen one - I don't even remember which one, but it pops up on HN every now and then; it's characteristic for having a bullet-point TL;DR at the top.

FT, Economist, WSJ, NY Times, The Times etc. Most newspaper I read follow that general format, often with a summary paragraph at the end.

Re: Show HN: A UI That Lets Readers Control How Much Information They See

#69

At first glance, I thought this was an UI proposal for automatic summarization before I read the full post. Once summarization is more mature and reliable, something like this would be cool.

What is the state of automatic summarization, by the way?

This is a good overview: https://blog.fastforwardlabs.com/2018/05/02/progress-in-text...
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