SBIR Phase I: Visual Communication for the 21st Century

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to test the feasibility of building a cloud-based platform for creation and sharing of informational content that is easy to visualize and understand. The platform will consist of VizLanguage, VizTools, VizDocs, and VizPublish. VizLanguage is a system of rules for presenting content in digital media to enable learning/reading using visualization techniques. (VizLanguage shares some similarities with graphic organizers, such as concept maps, but significantly differs in structure and function. The significance of the innovation is in its potential to dramatically decrease the cognitive load for people, with or without a learning disability, to understand, memorize, and recall information.) VizTools will enable the authoring and viewing of documents in the VizLanguage format. VizDocs will be interactive multimedia documents written in VizLanguage. VizPublish will be a service which allows social creation and sharing of VizDocs. The team is well-suited to execute Phase I research objectives to design, develop and evaluate the viewer and authoring tools. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is that VizLanguage directly benefits two user groups: the readers/consumers of informational content and authors/creators (including presenters/trainers/educators) of informational content. The mass market commercial impact could be strong, depending on the company?s ability to attract a large number of readers/learners, as well as authors/creators adding new information. The proposal also has the potential to allow K-16 educators, business presenters, and corporate trainers to organize their material in a logical fashion and minimize use of words to make connections between concepts. The project has generated interest from scientists and faculty members of academic institutions who are interested in becoming content contributors. When the product is fully developed, this visual approach to communication will be particularly helpful for those with learning and processing disabilities and should broaden participation of underrepresented groups. The company plans to partner with a large company for distribution and scaling. If successful, the platform is expected to help people worldwide learn, teach, train, and communicate more effectively. The technology is also expected to open up many new research opportunities in cognitive psychology, information visualization, information accessibility, graphical user interface and the numerous fields that they impact.