Twitch Speed: Reaching Younger Workers with Generator Chart Design
Random Access vs. Linear Thinking
The under-30 creation is the first to experience hypertext and clicking around, in children’s computer software, in CD-ROMs, and on the net. This new information structure has improved their awareness and ability to make connections, has freed them from the restriction of one route of thought, and is normally a very positive development.
At exactly the exact same time, it may be argued with some justification that unbridled hyper linking can make it more difficult for these employees to follow a linear train of thought and also to do some kinds of profound or logical thinking.
While following one’s own path often leads to interesting effects, knowing someone else’s logic is also very significant. A tough challenge is how to create experiences that enable people to link anywhere and experience things in any order yet still conveys.
One approach is to install new information-delivery systems, As corporate intranets, that allow employees break from the standard boxes where corporate information was stored, and then to make tools to connect this information to systems which provide decision-making and logical structure. The military and intelligence communities recently established Interlink, an intranet-based system where information becomes available as fast as it has generated, allowing users at all levels the freedom to create and explore arbitrary paths that lead to new thoughts.
The connecting and browsing structures of the Internet and intranets have many positive benefits, and supervisors of Nintendo-generation workers should encourage, rather than discourage, their creation and usage. Managers should also be exploring nonlinear digital alternatives to the current reports, guides, lectures, and lengthy narration videos.
Graphics First vs. Text First
In previous generations, graphics were normally illustrations, Accompanying the text and providing some type of elucidation. For today’s young people, the relationship is almost completely reversed: The use of text is to elucidate something that was experienced as a picture. Since youth, the younger generation has been subjected to television, videos, and computer games which put high quality, highly expressive images in front of them with little or no accompanying text.
The result of this encounter has been to substantially sharpen their visual sensitivity by generator human design in browsing structure. They find it much more natural than their predecessors to start with visuals, and to combine text and images in a richly meaningful way. An excellent example of this is Wired, whose intensive use of Graphics makes it highly attractive to younger readers but hard for many Older people to read.
The criticism hears from colleagues that shift toward graphic primacy from the younger generation raises some extremely thorny problems, particularly with regard to textual literacy and depth of information.