Gradual Revelation of Organized Information via Interactive Transmission (GROKIT)

PowerPoint™ is ubiquitous within government, military, academic, and commercial organizations, yet has many drawbacks that impair knowledge transfer. Authors must fit information into a linear array of slide-size chunks, built from generic primitives like bullets and clipart. This organization can obscure information, and ignores the human capacity for “visual cognition.” There is no interaction support for the briefer or the audience, nor is there any support for maintaining the presentation as an evolving representation in an organization. The proposed system for Gradual Revelation of Organized Knowledge via Interactive Transmission (GROKIT) directly addresses all of these problems. GROKIT employs complementary representational levels; a structural level that establishes a nonlinear “briefing map,” and a feature level that embeds domain-specific artifacts. GROKIT simplifies the creation of quality briefings, provides the briefer with a way to monitor audience comprehension, and provides the audience with a way to annotate and explore the briefing map. GROKIT briefings will be made web-accessible so domain-specific artifacts can be reused and adapted, and so that the briefing can serve as an organization’s evolving “knowledge receptacle.” These features are informed by research on visual communication, and will improve the accuracy of representation, efficiency of transfer, and recollection of knowledge.