Some of the money from our Comic Relief grant is directed towards improving the user experience of the AMBIT manual.
We have moved it to TiddlySpace now (you can still access it and all tiddlymanuals through the central 'signposting site' www.tiddlymanuals.com). This makes it much easier for new adopters to set up their own space (wiki) at TiddlySpace and then to opt to "include" all the ambit.tiddlyspace within their own. When they add their material (local expertise, implementation protocols) this is saved in their space, but links directly to the Anna Freud Centre's curated content, so that from a user's point of view the whole wiki is seamless.
It also makes the major renovation of the theme easier to try out. You can see where we have got to here - as ever feedback is very welcome and there is a link to this in the manual.
The idea of the new theme, that is being developed by Jonathan Lister & Joshua Bradley at J&J, is to make the manual a much easier experience for the user. The original manual was very "busy" - far too many links, not enough of what I call "centripetal" force in the writing (that is, the intrinsic interst and relevance of what I am reading that holds my attention, as opposed to centrifugal forces that are sparked by relevant or interesting links.
Ideally a wiki has the perfect balance: allowing exploration in depth, that is nonetheless contextualised through links to relevant details that draw me on into material that is just 'meta' to what I originally came for.
By 'calming the typeface down' and setting links to new tiddlers (in tiddlywiki, 'tiddlers' are small chunks of content - not quite pages, more like hyper-linked and taggable notelets) to open down below, out of sight, this makes for a much more fluid reading experience. As a reader clicks and opens tiddlers, it is as though that reader is setting up their tailor-made 'chapter' up ahead of them. A menu ("you are currently reading") on the right lists all the tiddlers open at any one time, and you can flick back and forth between these, or close them from there. Best to try this out rather than have me attempt to explain it. It seems different but highly intuitive... Interested to get feedback though.
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