Description / Experimentation / Navigation

After having implemented my “bubble breakdown”, I started studying its component parts. And I discerned a structure that I hadn’t really thought about while I was making it.

The web page has six parts. Two of the parts are for description, two are for experimentation, and two are for navigation.

I am thinking that this is a general blueprint for how to communicate knowledge: You tell people something, you give them a chance to play with that knowledge, and you also give them a way to wander around within the connected space of learnable things.

Wikipedia does two of those three things, the first and the third: It tells you stuff, and it provides ways for you to navigate around in the space of topics. But it doesn’t give you any way to gain insight by actively playing around with a topic.

As I think about what a future mixed reality version of Wikipedia might be like, I’m thinking that there is an opportunity to upgrade to a Description / Experimentation / Navigation paradigm. Whatever you look at in the world around you can become an opportunity for learning and exploration.

There are undoubtedly all sorts of tricky user interface problems to solve before that future version of Wikipedia becomes a practical reality. But I suspect those are going to be really fun problems to work on. 🙂