| VizAbility(TM)
is a multimedia product for building visual thinking skills. It is an
environment to explore learning experiences in Seeing, Drawing, Diagramming,
and Imagining, as well as excursions into the kinds of Environment and
Culture that support these. The content of the work is drawn largely from
the Stanford Visual Thinking course, and it was originally conceived as
a companion to Bob McKim's book, Experiences in Visual Thinking.
As a multimedia work it clearly stands on its own and makes a number of
original contributions in this area.
It's
partly about seeing
As one of three co-authors on the project, I collaborated on the inception
and development of the work, focusing largely on content development
for the Drawing Chapter. The screen for one of my favorites, "Square
Faces," appears here. In this exercise we build an intuitive sense of
when a cube looks like a cube by dragging one of the heavy vertical
lines to the point where it looks right as the back edge of a perspective
cube - a square face. An audible chime sounds when you hit the right
spot. Drag the other verical bar to the right place and get another
chime. Click new to try it with the cube at a different place in the
big circle.
By practicing
this simple game you can build a sense of visual judgment about what
makes proper proportion in perspective sketching.
Try
it!
To learn more about the CD, visit www.vizability.com.
Here you can find Shockwave examples of two of the modules,
Block Builder and Hidden Pictures. Try them out!
It
won several awards
The package, which incudes the interactive CDROM with a bound text and
blank sketchbook, has won several awards, including the Gold Medal for
Higher Education Title in the New Media Invision Awards, presented at
COMDEX'96. It was also the International Interactive Multimedia Grand
Award Winner in the New York Festivals. It has been awarded distinction
for interactive media design, notably from I.D. The International
Design Magazine. and Communication Arts magazine.
The latter was in the Information Design category in the Interactive
Annual issue.
Who
did this?
VizAbility was co-authored by Kristina Hooper Woolsey, Scott Kim and myself, and it was produced by Meta
Design and a number of other talented people in San Francisco. It
is published by Brooks/Cole Publishing and is available for both Mac
and Windows. It is offered in several configurations, including a deluxe
edition, with a handbook and blank sketch book, a student edition, and
as stand-alone modules.The VizAbility site has price
and ordering information.
-Gayle
|
