Proponents claim that interactive articles can “be more engaging, can help improve recall and learning, and attract broad readership and acclaim” (Hohman et al. 2020). How might we improve scholarly communication by augmenting research publications by making them more flexible, dynamic, or interactive?
For this exercise, you will turn an existing research paper into an augmented article and publish a working prototype on the web. The goal is to spur your thinking about possible augmentations, prototype at least one interesting form of display/interaction, and gain familiarity with existing tools.
You may work alone or in teams of two. You should publish your article as a web page and submit its URL to Canvas by October 17, 11:59pm PDT.
Start by identifying a research paper that you think is a good candidate for some kind of augmented treatment. You are highly encouraged to use your own research! For this assignment, you need not provide a comprehensive augmentation. The goal is to make the paper available in an accessible web format and experiment with adding at least one “augmentation” intended to improve reader comprehension and engagement.
Possible augmentations might include interactive figures (charts, diagrams, equations, theorems), linked interactions between text and figures, novel ways to incorporate or reference related work, mechanisms for annotation / note-taking, or alternative layouts or media. Try to identify an augmentation that you believe is particularly well-suited for your communication goals with your chosen paper and which you can comfortably complete by the deadline. You are free to rewrite paper content if it helps meet your goals.
As noted above, for this exercise you are free to focus on a single aspect of augmentation. For example, a paper may have a dozen+ figures, but it is fine if you augment just one in an interesting way. You are also not required to transcribe the entirety of a chosen paper, so long as the part that you publish is understandable in a stand-alone fashion.
Note that augmentations don’t necessarily have to be interactive (i.e., requiring direct user input). For example, novel layouts or adaptation to alternative media formats are both fair game. Talk to the course staff if you have any questions or concerns.
Your submission must take the form of a published web page compatible with a modern web browser (e.g., recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari). You are not expected to make your prototype responsive, supporting various desktop and mobile form factors. We expect most submissions to target a desktop form factor. That said, adapting a paper to support engaged reading on a mobile device may itself be a valuable assigment focus. You are free to choose.
Not sure what to do? Here are possible sources of inspiration to draw upon:
You are free to use any authoring tools (or combination thereof) that you like, so long as the resulting article can be read in a modern web browser (e.g., Firefox, Chrome, Safari).
Some options include:
You are not limited to one tool! For example, you might choose to make an interactive figure using Observable, then integrate it within Quarto or Living Papers. You might also take the HTML/JS/CSS output of a tool and then further edit it by hand if it serves your prototyping needs. Talk to the course staff if you have questions about how to achieve a design.
If you decide to publish an article in a notebook format, please think carefully about how the formatting imposed by the notebook shapes and constrains your designs.
Your interactive article must be published on the web, such that the course staff and fellow students can read it and interact with it. You may publish it yourself using GitHub pages or UW web hosting. Or, you may use another hosting service (e.g., Observable or Colab notebooks) if that aligns with your choice of authoring tools.
If your article has sensitive content (e.g., unpublished material, privacy concerns, etc.) you are free to include password protection, or discuss alternatives with the course staff. If the material is so sensitive that you would not share it with the class, please pick a different article!
Submit the URL to your article on Canvas. Your published prototype and submitted URL are due on October 17 by 11:59pm PDT. After submitting your URL, please add comments to your submission with any special instructions, such as reading on a mobile (rather than desktop) device.