Unprecedented User Experience, Millisecond-Precision of Text Identification

I worked with the Bureau of Study Counsel, a research group at Harvard University, to overhaul a reading comprehension application that increases reading volume and retention for college-level readers. The work is based on long-standing research on the physiology of reading.

My work with the Bureau of Study Counsel resulted in two state-of-the-art applications: a player that runs these “films,” (their technical term); and an authoring tool that allows staff to create a film from plain text.

Reading material is presented so that a window hovers over a portion of text that renders that text in focus while the remaining text is out of focus. The window jumps to the adjoining text and brings the new text into focus while the previous portion reverts back to being unfocused. The window continues its journey through the material, with text coming into focus only inside the window. The eye is guided in a controlled manner and without the ability to change speeds or stop at difficult material, thus forcing the reader to keep up. The eye guidance is timed according to eye saccade data within 16 milliseconds.

Features

• The timed window of text, within 16 milliseconds, which adapted dynamically to accommodate CPU drift.
• The marriage of aesthetics and utility in one application, unprecedented in desktop software at that time.

Made for:

Harvard University Health Services, Bureau of Study Counsel