A super simple demo, of a super simple feature. (more of an experiment really) The assumptions is that an infinite canvas is great for creative / generative tasks. But then for processing a linear workflow, might be better / more natural / impose less cognitive burden. That is what we’re trying to explore with ‘Zen Mode’ 😉

I like the idea of hybridizing an open-ended canvas with a focused view mode, but it isn’t clear from this video how your system does that. The drag-out interaction looks indistinguishable from clicking on hyperlink. Do the dragged-out links appear on the canvas when you switch out of focused mode? Etc.

It’s a bit of an experiment, so the way it set up now is very simple and relies on behaviour that we already had in the app. The full screen / zen mode thing is an overlay, and the block rendered on that overlay is a ‘real’ block, all the normal interactions are there, e.g. the drag and drop. This means that when you drag and drop e.g. a link, a new block is created and focus is switched to it, thus that becomes the content of the overlay—so it is almost like an aperture for looking at /focusing on blocks one at a time 😉 (as a consequence, yes—all of the block you created while in this ‘mode’ are now on the canvas—as you have not really left the canvas, so to speak). Hope I didn’t confuse matters too much 😜

Ok! I think it would be helpful & interesting if the video showed those aspects. 🙂

The assumption resonates with me a lot! I struggle a lot navigating figma designs when using the infinite canvas and feel much more at ease when there is a “prototype” that I can navigating with the arrows

2D / 3D experiences are really good for some things, but we seem to really need linear structures. (stories, spoken language, text etc., memory and our perception of time) If you’re given a 2D space or a graph (nodes and edges) the freedom and burden of telling the story of that graph is on you. There might be many places to start and many branches you can take—there is no unique perspective, which clashes with our experience. We’ve been trying to find ways to mitigate that, e.g. • wherever you can write text in Nette you can create links to blocks (in-line refs)—this will teleport you to that block, giving you a device to create a narratives • the other option is a presentation block—in this case you can create a list of links to ‘places on canvas’—essentially scripting the ‘camera movement’ • and now looking into the ‘zen mode’, which is just switching focus from block to block, but with rest of the canvas covered for a more distraction free experience Zoom is also promising but I’ve not really seen any super convincing ideas of how to use it in practice, to give users less confusing and more organised experience.