The Idea

Diagram Families, not Solo Diagrams

Wikidiagrams makes families of diagrams rather than just individual diagrams. Work on styling and small details for these families is shared. That makes attention to detail rewarding. The work benefits many diagrams not just one. Moreover, working on families of diagram promotes easy ways of updating diagrams, so that translations and updates of what the diagram shows require less work than before.

The consistency between diagrams from the same family also means that users of the diagrams can get used to particular ways of interacting with the diagrams. That's important for interactive diagrams. If diagrams have consistency in how they operate, the interactive features will be easier to find and use.

Wikidiagrams has processes that act on diagrams of many kinds. Even a still image can be modified to make it more interactive.

• For example, a 'slippy maps' interface, similar to the one used for 'google maps', allows exploration of a huge image. For google maps the 'huge image' is the entire world. The same idea, where you can zoom in, where you can drag to reposition the image, where you can view photographic satellite imagery or schematic imagery, can be applied to many other kinds of chart.
• Another technique, based on what is sometimes called an 'image map', distinguishes between different zones of a graphic. Large informative tooltips show up when you hover over the different parts of the image. These tooltips give more context than a normal small tooltip does, as well as possibly containing onward links. These smart tooltips make it possible to pack a lot of information into a single diagram.

These are just two examples of ways to augment diagrams to make them more interactive. Wikidiagrams is built on operations that you can apply to diagrams to make them more interactive.

Programming Required?

The full flexibility of wikidiagrams requires programming. That would be a major barrier to making interactive diagrams easily. Fortunately pioneering initiatives for teaching children to program, such as 'Scratch', show that a block based approach to programming can be easy to learn. Scratch is easier to pick up than a mainstream computer language. Many children can make simple animations soon after getting started with it.

Part of the reason that Scratch is easier to learn than conventional programming is that it is very visual. All the time you can see what you are making. The programs are about creating images rather than about creating mathematical calculations. There is visual feedback, which is very intuitive.

Wikidiagrams uses 'blocks' that snap together to build up more complex diagrams in a similar way to Scratch. Experience from teaching children to make animations using 'Scratch' informs decisions about what blocks to provide, and how blocks should combine to make an interactive image.

The graphic designer also still draws and places objects on a screen, as in a normal graphic editor. However, with a block based program behind the diagram, the computer can do a lot of the repetitive part of making the diagrams.

For families of diagrams, diagrams can be created at two levels. One level, the 'template' can be for format and styling of all diagrams in the family. This then means that a simpler program can be used to create each individual diagram. That's easier to understand and work with. The constant parts that are the same across all diagrams in the family are held inside the template. When working on a particular diagram, only the parts unique to that diagram need to be changed.

Next: The Plan