# worrydream - Explorable Explanations

[worrydream Website](http://worrydream.com/#!/ExplorableExplanations) by Bret Victor

Explorable Explanations is about ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people's relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. Bret Victor wants text to be used as an environment to think in.

This essay presents examples of a few initial ideas:

## Reactive Documents

![](https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/BP2019RH1/doc/research-styles/pictures/reactiveDocuments.png)

#### "reading" the Visualization

- We read the text.
- In the Analysis section we noticed underlined phrases
- Hovering over the underlined phrases and numbers, we were encouraged through different mouse symbols and text to drag or click
- Changing the data, we noticed some numbers in the paragraph below adapting

#### what kind of visualization

- text field with
  - numbers
  - underlined phrases and numbers
  - static information

#### what data

- amount of money
- percentage
- underlying set

#### mapping data to visualization

- user changes by dragging or clicking underlined data
- visualization is directly adapted
- the text changes, computes new values

#### what kind of interaction for the user

- dragging
- clicking through different options

## Explorable Examples

![](https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/BP2019RH1/doc/research-styles/pictures/explorableExamples.png)

#### "reading" the Visualization

- First we noticed the schematic at the top
- Next we skimmed the complex function below it
- Then we noticed the two graphs and tried manipulating them
- When we manipulated the data, two more graphs were shown next to the function and the image, but it is not obvious what they are supposed to represent
- Moreover, depending on how we changed the data, parts of the function and variables in the function and in the image were replaced with numbers

![](https://lively-kernel.org/lively4/BP2019RH1/doc/research-styles/pictures/explorableExamplesManipulatingGraph.png)

- As soon as we stopped manipulating the data, those numbers and the graphs vanished again
- Lastly, we noticed the gray text field

#### what kind of visualization

- text field with static information (not always visible)
- function
- schematic
- graphs
- z-plane and step response (not always visible)

#### what data

- frequency responses as graphs
- computed values depending on the graph

#### mapping data to visualization

- user changes by dragging button in graph
- visualization is directly adapted
- values are computed that are shown in the function and the image

#### what kind of interaction for the user

- buttons in the graph that can be dragged

## Contextual Information

didn't work

the idea is to type "w" above a word and be able to search Wikipedia