Simplicity and Education – A Use Case

How can we communicate facts that are abstract or out of our field of vision? Illustrating it is an excellent and often used technic to do so. But how can we go about facts that are impossible to bring on one piece of paper? The University Of Utah has a possible solution.

Cell Size And Scale is a small Flash application that shows object of different sizes. Ranging from a coffeee bean to the carbon atom. The only interaction needed and the only interaction available is scaling. Seems obvious, right? What I really appreciate about it is the fact that the horizontal scroll bar is the only interactive object. No zooming by double-click, no drag & drop, no right-click. Simply move the bar from left to right as you scale through the dimensions.

Simplycity meets illustration meets education – hopefully the result is insight with a touch of joy.

Cell Size and Scale on Utah.edu