What is Visuwords and how can it enhance brainstorming and writing?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the tool Visuwords, exploring its potential to enhance brainstorming and writing through its visual representation of word relationships. Participants share their experiences and opinions on its utility, navigability, and overall effectiveness in various contexts.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants suggest that Visuwords serves as a useful tool for brainstorming by visually connecting words, potentially aiding in writing.
  • Others express skepticism about its practicality, noting that it lacks sufficient associations and navigational features, which limits its usefulness.
  • One participant compares the visual aspect of Visuwords to protein folding, indicating an interest in the underlying physics of the representation.
  • Several participants mention the interactivity of the tool, including features like panning, zooming, and hovering over nodes for additional information.
  • There are observations about the variability of associations based on the input word, with some words yielding more connections than others.
  • Concerns are raised about the static nature of the graph and the difficulty in navigating when words extend off-screen.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the effectiveness of Visuwords. While some find it useful for conceptualizing words, others argue that its limitations hinder its practical application.

Contextual Notes

Limitations noted include the dependence on the choice of input word for the number of associations and the challenges in navigating the visual representation effectively.

waht
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If you are writing a paper perhaps this might be useful to bounce around words. It's a dictionary and a thesaurus that connects words in a visual way:

http://www.visuwords.com/
 
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Thanks for this waht.
 
Hey that's cool. Nice find waht :)
 
I love the physics of it, it's sort of like protein folding. It didn't seem very practical or useful in any context to me, though...not enough associations, and it couldn't really be navigated. I guess I was expecting something that would allow you to dynamically travel through the relationships instead of just seeing 1 static graph with a small handful of associations...most of which are just different parts of speech of the input word..
 
I found it strangely appropriate that when I opened it, the subject was 'indecency'. I'm as indecent as I can get away with whenever possible. :biggrin:
 
That is useful. :smile: Helps you grasp the idea/concept of words better, or conceptualize.
 
junglebeast said:
I love the physics of it, it's sort of like protein folding. It didn't seem very practical or useful in any context to me, though...not enough associations, and it couldn't really be navigated. I guess I was expecting something that would allow you to dynamically travel through the relationships instead of just seeing 1 static graph with a small handful of associations...most of which are just different parts of speech of the input word..

I guess it depends on the word you use. I got "rap" as a random pick and the number of associations was pretty big. Still no navigation that I could tell. You can interact with it though.
 
TheStatutoryApe said:
I guess it depends on the word you use. I got "rap" as a random pick and the number of associations was pretty big. Still no navigation that I could tell. You can interact with it though.

You can pan and zoom.
 
what said:
You can pan and zoom.
If you hover over one of the nodes it will show a bit more info. Also you can "grab" one of the nodes and move the thing around by it though I haven't figured out the use of it other than to maybe untangle it a bit or to just mindlessly shake it around.
 
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TheStatutoryApe said:
If you hover over one of the nodes it will show a bit more info. Also you can "grab" one of the nodes and move the thing around by it though I haven't figured out the use of it other than to maybe untangle it a bit or to just mindlessly shake it around.

sometime the words go off the screen and you can't move to where they are so you just move them to where you are :) cause when you zoom out to see the words it's hard to make out the details.

Woah NVM that you can click the background and drag to move around... never noticed that before.
 

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