MindWriter: An Integrated Environment to Support Creative Academic Writing Experience

Kai HuEnvironmental Systems Research

Institute380 New York StreetRedlands, CA, 92373

1-765-513-6880ixdarchitects@gmail.com

Zhenyu Cheryl QianPurdue University

552 W Wood StreetWest Lafayette, IN, 47907

1-765-494-3069qianz@purdue.edu

Yingjie Victor ChenPurdue University401 N Grant Street

West Lafayette, IN, 479071-765-494-1454

victorchen@purdue.edu

ABSTRACTThe design of word processing software had always been focusing on enhancing the functionality and productivity, yet ignored the creative aspect of writing activity. We investigated and identified the academic writers' pain points from studies of contextual inquiries. Based on a recursive writing model, we present MindWriter - an academic writing software design that fosters a clear writing workflow and supports the creative prewriting activities - ideation, brainstorming and mind mapping.

Categories and Subject DescriptorsH.0 Information Systems: General

General TermsDesign, Human Factors

KeywordsAcademic writing, writing models, integrated academic writing environment, activity theory, data visualization, cognitive offloading.

1. INTRODUCTIONWriting, as a way of information storage and communication, enables the knowledge transmission to cross generations and cultures without personal presence. Writing being a unique human activity, its importance never fades away. Today, starting before pre-school all the way to college, writing has always been a key element in education, regardless of the differences in language, nationality, and culture. To be successful in academia, writing is an inescapable part for college students and university faculties.

From handwriting with pen and paper to mechanical/electrical writing with a typewriter, and to digital writing with keyboard and screen, we witness that writing technology kept on evolving alongside the waves of industrial revolutions. Entering the digital writing age, we observed the development of word processing technology enabled writers to input, organize, style, print and share texts in a more comfortable and faster way. The dramatic and continuing advancement in technology significantly re-shaped the physical form and process of traditional writing. However, writing as a highly complex mental activity, the design of those word processing software had always been focusing on the enhancement of functionality and the support of productivity, but ignored the creative side of writing activity.

This study conducted a literature review, a series of case studies and contextual inquiry user studies to explore word processing software’s function landscape, and identify academic writers’ needs and pain points. Through iterative design cycles of brainstorming, card sorting, wire framing and interactive

prototyping, we proposed MindWriter – a word processing system that could foster a clear academic writing workflow to reflect the recursive nature of writing, and support the creative prewriting activities – ideation, brainstorming and mind mapping. The tools provided in MindWriter allows a user to visually and dynamically build idea blocks, create idea and literature connections and in the end, it automatically generates the writing project outline. Based on the literature review and case study conducted in the research, MindWriter is the first writing software design attempts to support the prewriting activity and integrated the creative part of writing, mind mapping into the authoring process.

2. LITERATURE REVIEWResearch concerning academic writing has a long history, extending and connecting multiple disciplines. To design an integrated word processing environment for academic writing, not only it is necessary to study the technology side of writing, but also there is a need to unfold the nature of academic writing, and investigate the behavior side of writing.

2.1 The Roles, Challenges and the Paradigm of Academic WritingIn higher education, writing is an inevitable part of students and university faculties. For scholars, the quantity and quality of research publications have always been critical criteria for assessing their performance (Centra, 1977; Miller & Seldin, 2014), and scholars’ livelihood was depending on the papers they produced (Hartley, 2008). For students, writing is also at the center of teaching and learning (Curry, Lillis & Coffin, 2005), and serves three main purposes (Hartley, 2008, p. 2):

Assessment – assessing students’ mastery of disciplinary courses.

Learning – helping students learn disciplinary knowledge and develop general reason and critique abilities.

Entering particular disciplinary communities – preparing students to produce text that approximates the norms and conventions of their disciplines.

Despite the known importance of academic writing and different forms of writing support provided, studies showed various challenges that students and faculties are facing on academic writing (Coffin et al., 2005):

Limited academic resources for the increasing number of students.

Education globalization increased the diversity of student population in social, culture and linguistic background.

Complex higher education participation pattern, regarding full-time, part-time, brings in the complexity of curriculum setting.

Curriculum shifts towards modulization and interdisciplinary

Information technology impacts contribute to the new mode of curriculum delivery – long distance learning

According to Lea and Street, the standards of student’s writing were falling, and many academic staffs at school or in higher education claimed that “student can no longer write” (Lea & Street, 1998, p.157). Sidman-Taveau and Karathanos-Aguilar’s study also highlighted that English as the second language students were particularly struggling in academic writing (Sidman-Taveau & Karathanos-Aguilar, 2015).

While investigating the characteristics of academic writing, Hartley stated that “research articles typically have a standard structure/formula to facilitate communication, which is known as IMRAD (introduction, method, results, and discussion)” (Hartley, 2008, p. 8). Although there are individual differences in the language style, disciplinary knowledge and writing habits, academic writing is always based on this basic format and is often characterized as a “hierarchically organized, goal-directed, the problem-solving process” (Hartley, 2008, p. 10). Because of this very nature, the outline of academic writing work, the purpose and format of each writing components are typically predefined (Curry & Hewings, 2003).

In today’s highly complex and diversified higher education environment, compromised by the limited teaching resources, the traditional practice of teaching and learning academic writing often follow a rigid linear process corresponding to the hierarchically organized structure of academic writing.

2.2 Writing Models and BehaviorsWriting is a highly complex mental activity, and the cognitive side of writing have been studied by linguists and psychologists over the past thirty-plus years. Seeking to get more deep insights for the academic writing system design, this section explores writing from the studies of writing models, writing engagement, and a common writer symptom - writer’s block.

2.2.1 The Stage Model, the Process Model and the Cognitive ModelIn practice of teaching and learning academic writing, the structure of a writing project was always guiding the actual stages or processes of writing. This approach was reflected by the stage model, which divided the writing process into several distinct and separated stages, for example, plan, write, revision, editing (see Figure 2). The benefit of structuring writing assignments and fitting into time constraints made it a popular approach at many writing centers. However, multiple scholars expressed different attitudes towards the linear stage model. Ronald V White stated that “a linear model of writing is both inappropriate and unhelpful, since writing appears to be a highly recursive process” (White, 1988. p. 7), and in reality “the stages of writing process can happen in various orders at different points” (Curry & Hewings, 2003, p. 34). Rooted in the iterative or recursive nature of writing, Figure 3 shows a recursive writing process model

demonstrating writer’s activities during those different writing processes.

Figure 2. The Linear Four Stage Writing Model

Figure 3. The Recursive Writing Process Model (Curry & Hewings, 2003, p. 34)

In order to get a better understanding of why expert writers were better than novice writers, Flower and Hayes adopted the think-aloud protocol to capture detailed and rich record of what was going on in the writer’s mind during the act of composing, and proposed the well-known cognitive model (see Figure 4). Shifting from the traditional linear sequence/stage model to process-based models, Flower and Hayes’ model places cognitive actions in a hierarchical format that reflected the recursive nature of writing, and consists of three parts: Task Environment, Writing Process, and The Writer’s Long-term Memory (Flower & Hayes, 1981).

Figure 4. Flower and Hayes' Cognitive Model (Flower & Hayes, 1981, p. 370)

Flower and Hayes considered writing as a rhetorical act that included not only the rhetorical situation and audience who promoted one to write but also included the writer’s goals in writing. Speaking of writer’s long-term memory, it can exist either in mind or in outside resources such as books, dictionaries, online writing resources, etc. Based on Flower and Hayes’s explanation, the long-term memory is “a storehouse of knowledge about the topic and audience, as well as knowledge of writing plans and problem representations” (Flower & Hayes, 1981, p. 371), and the challenge with long-term memory is knowing when, where and how to find the cue to retrieve the useful knowledge associated with writing. In the cognitive model, they mentioned that writer would monitor the current writing process and progress, and define strategies to decide when to move from one process to another. Based on Flower and Hayes’ observation, “this choice is determined both by the writer’s goals and by individual writing habits or styles” (Flower & Hayes, 1981, p. 374). The cognitive model later became a springboard for further researches that involves cognition as a factor in writing. In user experience design, a mental model is a key concept that would affect users’ workflow. Those different writing models provided valuable insights for us to design the information architecture of the academic writing system – MindWriter.

2.2.2 The Engaging Writing Environment and Writer’s Block Despite the fact that writers, either novice or experienced, are different in knowledge background, experience, writing style and habit, most share two shared needs: the longing for an engaging writing environment and knowing strategies to overcome writer’s block.

Writing requires a highly focused environment, physically, socially and cognitively (Mayrath, 2008). Take writing space, for example, some people like sitting in a quiet office while writing, some prefer writing in a café or library with white noise in the background, and some might favor the particular window by the garden at home. It might be easy to get an ideal spatial environment for writing; however, social distraction is a tough issue to solve. Living in the complex social network, people possess multiple roles with different responsibilities. Disengaging from other activities to writing, people always deal with distraction and anxiety, in order to bring the mindset back to the flow of writing. To become a productive author, Mayrath’s study identified four attributes: collaboration, passion/curiosity, research skills, and time management (Mayrath, 2008). In 2012, Rowena Murray researched a mixture of roles and disciplines’ scholars’ disengagement from other tasks to writing. The result showed that all respondents saw an engaging environment are essential for writing.

Apart from the topic of writing engagement, writer’s block is a common challenge for all writers. It is a symptom that when an author experiences a creativity slowdown or loses the ability, for various and often undefined reasons, to produce new writing work. Almost every writer suffered writer’s block, and they were unable to write despite being intellectually capable of doing so.

Being a relatively common problem, strategies to overcome writer’s block had been proposed by several scholars. Lawrence J. Oliver suggested that freewriting could be an effective exercise for overcoming students’ writer’s block (Oliver, 1982). She suggested having students write on a topic for 10 or 15 minutes without stopping, reconsidering, revising, or correcting anything, including grammar, style or coherence. Oliver further explained

that even though those free writing sentences might be incoherent, ideas might be fragmented, and language might be banal, those thoughts spilled out on paper would usually “yield valuable raw material for a composition” (Oliver, 1982, p. 167). According to Dr. Paricia Huston, writer’s block is “generally considered to be a stress reaction that paralyzes the ability to put thoughts into words” (Huston, 1998, p. 93). Dividing writer’s block into different levels, Huston suggested a list of strategies for preventing and overcoming this issue during different blockage stages, such as visioning, mind-mapping, utilizing writing resources, self-assessment, break down the work into manageable tasks and so on.

3. THE DESIGN OF MINDWRITERBased on some of the existing user experience design process models and the available resources at hand, this study proposed the 5XD user experience iterative design model to guide the overall design process: Discover, Define, Design, Diagnose, and Deliver. In different design stages, we adopted multiple methods:

(1) Discover: literature review, anecdotal feedback analysis, activity analysis, case study and contextual inquiry.

(2) Define: problem domain, word processor functions, writing mental model, information architecture.

(3) Design: brainstorming/ideation, card sorting, mind mapping, affinity diagram, wireframe, low fidelity prototype, visual mockup, high fidelity interactive prototype.

(4) Diagnose: A/B testing, heuristic evaluation,(5) Deliver: refined high fidelity interactive prototype,

function specifications, system video demo and so on.In the following sections, we selectively introduce some of the results during the overall design processes.

3.1 Activity Analysis & Case StudyIn the study, we analyzed academic writing from a socio-technical perspective, using the classic activity theory (Engeström, 2000; Engeström, Miettinen & Punamäki, 1999). The result (Figure 5) showed that academic writing required distributed cognition.

To support the highly complex mental activity - writing, scholars acquire various artifacts/tools to facilitate the overall process. Meanwhile, academic writing is typically not completed solely; in many cases, the activity involves multiple people with different responsibilities; depending on the audience of the writing work, there are various rules (for example the paradigm) related to academic writing.

It is undeniable that the original purpose of those tools was to support different writing tasks and ease the writing process. For instance, Google Scholar and university libraries are used for searching bibliographies; Mendeley, Zotero, and EndNote are used to manage literature collections better and easier; emails and messaging apps are used for communication and transferring files; mind mapping tools are designed to support brainstorming, linking, clustering and displaying ideas.

Before moving to the design work, we case studied a broad variety of tools that were relevant to academic writing:

(1) word processing software for writing – Microsoft Word, WPS Office, Google Docs, Zoho Docs, Quip, Overleaf, Manuscript & Authorea,

(2) bibliography databases & management tools for searching, storing and managing resources – Zotero, Mendeley & Endnote, and

(3) mind mapping tools for ideation – MindManager, Coogle, Creately, Minmeister, Lucidchart & Realtime Board.

The case study offered rich design inspirations for the writing system design, from the perspectives of functionality, trending

user experience and interface design. Drilling into the findings of writing software for example, we categorized the possible function features of word processing software (Figure 6), which helped us to establish a new information architecture of MindWriter.

Figure 6. Analyzing Academic Writing Using Activity Theory

Figure 6. Word Processing Function Features

3.2 Contextual Inquiry StudiesContextual inquiry is a research method usually conducted in the user’s working environment, using semi-structured interview and observation to understand how a user works on a task/tasks and what are the needs. Because the interview and observation happen in their familiar environment, the data collected is more realistic and rich in detail than the data collected from a laboratory. Based on the book, Contextual design: defining customer-centered system (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1997), contextual inquiry follows four principles (pp. 41-66):

Context – Go to the customer’s workplace to observe and understand how they work.

Partnership – Engage with customers and articulate the work together.

Interpretation – Get involved in the activities and develop a shared understanding with the customer on the ongoing work.

Focus – Define a clear purpose and framework for the inquiry, and stick to it.

Sitting in the participants’ offices, graduate studios or apartments, this study recruited two faculty members and four graduate students from Purdue University (Figure 7). Both faculty member participants had more than 20 years’ experiences using word processing software, of which one was in the field of art history and the other in the field of interaction design. All four graduate students had more than ten years’ experience using word processing software, of which two were Master’s student in interaction design, one Ph.D. student in biology, and one Master’s student in computer graphic technology. The questions we sought to answer were:

(1) How do they use a word processing software to write an academic paper?

(2) What kind of writing strategies and processes they have?

(3) What kind of software functionality or usability problems they have encountered?

(4) What other tools do they use and how do they use them?

Figure 7. Contextual Inquiry in the User’s Familiar Environment

3.2.1 ProcedureSitting in the participants’ writing environment, we introduced the contextual inquiry method and the purpose of this study. A quick survey was then conducted to collect their demographic information, discipline background, experiences of using word processing software and bibliography management tools. The introduction and survey took around 15 minutes to finish.

Followed was a combination of observation and interview while participants were working on their papers. Each observation took around 45 to 60 minutes to complete. After the observation and interview, we conducted a 15 to 20 minutes closing interview to clarify some of the high-level issues related to the participant’s academic writing process.

3.2.2 Data Collection, Analysis, and Identified ProblemsThe study facilitator audio recorded the conversations happened in the observation and interview process and took notes on the main problems identified. After conducting the contextual inquiry with all participant, we summarized the identified issues and categorized them into six problem domains.

Here are some highlights of the findings from the contextual study:

All participants used Microsoft Word for academic writing, and one mentioned that he tried latex based writing tool – Overleaf. However, after several times’ exploration, he gave up Overleaf as he did not like the experience of coding and there were issues for collaborative writing. For bibliography management tools, three of them used Zotero and three used Mendeley. Four of those

participants complained that opening multiple applications on the screen while writing was distracting, such as Microsoft Word, Bibliography Tools and internet browser. All of them mentioned the prewriting activities take considerable time, but the writing tool they use did not support this need. Four of them mentioned mind mapping ideas on the paper (see Figure 8). All of them indicated they had limited fragmented time for writing, it was hard to switching mind in-between other activities and writing, and it took time for them track the overall writing process. All of them complained about the difficulties in formatting text in Microsoft Word. The tricks they used to find relevant literature was to look at the reference list of the papers they already found, and one mentioned that the use of Amazon to search for newly published books. All of them used multiple bibliography databases, such as university library, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, Google Scholar, Springer, ACM Digital Library and so on. Participants mentioned that in Microsoft Word multiple people could not work on the same file at the same time. There is a need to save multiple version files while using Microsoft Word. Even though the use of bibliography management tools helped them manage literature, it is still difficult to use those tools to cite papers.

Figure 8. Mind Mapping on Paper During Writing

Based on the observation and user responses to the interview during the contextual inquiry, we categorized six problem domains that academic writers were facing with summarized details:

1. Creativity Support

Current word processing software does not provide functions that support the critical prewriting activities – ideation, brainstorming, and mind mapping.

2. Writing Guidance and Assistant

Do not know where and how to start writing (when opening word, beginners may get frightened by the big blank writing space).

To many people, writing is a tedious task. It is easy for beginners to give up at the early stage due to the lack of guidance and assistant.

Checking grammar, spelling, and punctuation, etc. take too much time and need assistance.

3. Formatting and Citation

There are too many tools in the MS Word that user may never use and sometimes it is just hard to find the needed tool to format the layout and styling of an academic paper.

Formatting and styling texts take time, and sometimes this process is frustrating.

Adjusting citation style is always time-consuming and annoying. When writing collaboratively in Google Docs, there is no way to use bibliography management tools to generate reference list.

4. Collaboration

Different people use different software. When it comes to collaborative writing, they usually switch to Google Docs. However, uploading files to Google Docs or downloading files from Google Docs may cause formatting issues.

Dropbox could sync the MS Word documents, but it does not support multiple people working on the same file simultaneously.

5. Content and Time Management

External tools are useful and practical for bibliography management.

Revision after revisions, there are too many files of different writing versions.

Fragmented time for writing makes schedule management, and process tracking is challenging.

People always use paper or notebook to record some quick ideas and then need to transfer them to computers for digitalization.

6. Distraction and Engagement

The user interface of MS Word is distracting, and many additional function buttons take too much of the screen space.

Academic writing requires distributed actions and uses various software. Switching in-between different software blocks the flow of writing.

Lost track of the overall writing process while coming back from other activities.

3.3 Defining a New Writing Model and the Information Architecture of MindWriterAfter several rounds of brainstorming, mind mapping, and card sorting (Figure 9), through integrating the findings from the literature review, activity analysis, case study and contextual inquiry, we proposed a new recursive writing model and an information architecture to guide the design of MindWriter.

Figure 9. Brainstorming, Mind Mapping and Card Sorting

The new writing model (Figure 10) consists of four recursive stages:

Prewriting – Bibliography/Knowledge Database Building and Management (search/filter/collect/organize), and Writing Project Planning (goal setting/ideation/mind mapping & outlining/scheduling).

Compose – Independent/collaborative writing, outlining writing structure/text manipulation/style, format & layout/graph, table, equation & symbol/bibliography citation, etc.

Reflection and Revision – Version track & compare, spelling/grammar check & correction, writing structure & language revisit/revise, dictionary & writing guide visit/ bibliography search, read & compare, etc.

Review – Mark/highlight text, leave/reply/label comments, set problem status (active/solved), etc.

Figure 10. The New Recursive Writing Model

While developing the information architecture (Figure 11), an important consideration was to keep a comparable flat system hierarchy, because a flat system hierarchy could make content more “discoverable” and “more categories at each level usually has more specific labels that are easier to understand” (Whitenton, 2013). Hence, MindWriter’s architecture had only three main pages, and each page’s function components were spreading out comparatively equal:

Landing Page – users could sign up, log in to use the system and watch introduction tutorials.

Content Management – users could check a writing dashboard to check recent writing activities, start a new

writing project, manage writings and bibliography, do system and account settings.

Writing Space – users could conduct prewriting, writing and review activities. In the space, there are also built-in tools for collaborative writing communication and to assist other writing activities (pull in a micro-writing note, grammar check, version compare, etc.).

The information architecture established well integrated the new recursive writing model proposed, which included the prewriting activities. It provided a clear view of the system function structure and illustrated how a user would move from one activity to another.

Figure 11. MindWriter Information Architecture

3.4 The DesignThe fundamental design concepts of MindWriter was the integration of relevant tools that foster a clear academic writing workflow and facilitate various academic writing activities (including prewriting activities). With the guidance of the proposed new writing model and information architecture, we sketched design wireframes to brainstorm interface layout, organizing interface function elements. During the design process, the researchers produced a lot of hand-sketched wireframes of multiple design ideas (Figure 12).

Figure 12. Wireframe Sketches

Through A/B testing and focused group study, we defined the design direction and moved forward using Axure to design a high-fidelity interactive prototype. To evaluate the design, inspect potential usability problems and gain some feedback from the users, the study conducted heuristic evaluations with five evaluators, using the work-in-progress interactive prototype. With the heuristic evaluation result, we refined several parts of the design. This section discusses the key design features of MindWriter.

3.4.1 Landing PageA landing page is the front face of a website or web service. The design objective of this page (Figure 13) was to create a refreshing landing experience, where the user could quickly login to the system or register an account. Allowing users to log into the system via their social network account made the registration process faster and easier. Some video tutorials were arranged on the lower part of this page, introducing key functional features of the system.

Figure 13. Landing Page

3.4.2 Dashboard PageThe design of the dashboard page (Figure 14) sought to provide a quick overview of the user’s recent writing activities, such as how

many papers or words he or she has finished based on the time selected. Visualizing current writing activities help the user gain the situation awareness of his or her recent writing achievement. This tool didn’t intend to facilitate writing, but, by providing statistical information about recent writing activity to motivate the user for further writing.

Figure 14. Dashboard Page

The writing cards (Figure 15), displaying a feature image from the writing or a word cloud based on the text produced, intended to provide a visual clue of the paper content. A calendar tool has been integrated into the system design, and a simple visual representation of the writing progress allowed the user to quickly monitor the upcoming deadlines and the overall writing progress of each active paper. Several operational buttons were clustered at the bottom of the card, allowing a user quickly to move, tag, download the file and share the document with other collaborators.

Similar to the writing cards, bibliography cards also used feature images as a way of memory offloading, which sought to help the user gain a quick understanding of the paper content. Author names and keywords were listed below the literature title.

Figure 15. Writing Cards

3.4.3 New WritingLike many existing word processing software, MindWriter offers three simple ways to create a new writing project (Figure 16):

Start a completely new writing

Start from an existing file saved locally or saved in the cloud storage services

Start from a writing template

The writing template types defined at this stage were: thesis, journal, conference paper, grant writing, annotated bibliography, lab report, resume, and presentation. The template system also allowed the user to add or create a new template into the system, by pressing the + sign on the templates tab bar. On-click one of the template thumbnail image, the selected template preview with related metadata would show up on the screen (Figure 17).

Figure 16. New Writing Page

Figure 17. Template Preview

3.4.4 My Docs and Knowledge DBThe interface of My Docs (Figure 18) and Knowledge DB followed a three-column layout style. Navigation buttons were fixed on the left, the folder navigation pane with tabs was arranged next to the navigation buttons, and the biggest screen space was for displaying visual writing cards or literature collection cards. On click of a writing card or a literature card, an information pane would pop up on the screen, displaying the outline, abstract, keywords, and a word cloud generated from the file content. Those design solutions allowed the user to get an instant understanding of the file content without opening it.

Figure 18. MyDocs Page

In academic writing, literature collection is a time-consuming task, and finding the right reference paper is challenging. One of the tricks used by the contextual inquiry participants was to review the reference list of an article already found.

While reviewing bibliography, a scholar not only needs to understand the content of the literature but also to learn the root and development of the theory. A traditional way of this exercise is scrolling down to the end of the paper to check the reference list. However, a reader would never know who else cited this literature. MindWriter provided the bibliography preview (Figure 19) with a citation visualization (Figure 20), allowing the user to quickly review the citation information, backward and forward. The cited papers of the selected literature were listed on the left, and those papers cited the literature were listed on the right. With the graphical representation of time framing (color-coded publication year) of all connected papers in chronological order, a user could follow the clue to quickly track down many more valuable reference resources.

Figure 19. KnowledgeDB Bibliography Preview

3.4.5 Writing SpaceAs discussed in the problem domains, at the time the study was conducted, there was no word processing software support the important prewriting activities, such as ideation, brainstorming and mind mapping, etc. MindWriter, however, brought in the mind mapping idea as the first step of writing. During the mind map writing stage, the user could visually, progressively and dynamically build up idea blocks, create connections, and in the end, form a unique structural overview of the writing document (Figure 21).

In this space, mind mapping tools were clustered and arranged on the left side of the interface, collaboration status were on the upper right of the interface, and a chat box was at the lower right corner. A column of writing assistant tools that could toggle corresponding panes were aligned on the right side of the interface.

Reflecting the proposed new recursive writing model, three tabs were arranged at the top part of the interface, allowing the user to switch in-between different writing stages: MindMap, Compose and Review. A share button, a change tracking toggle, and an ambient music player were arranged on the right side of those writing stage toggle tabs.

Upon finishing the mind map of a writing task, the system could automatically generate the content hierarchically based on the mind map outline, showing in the composing stage (Figure 22). In the composing space, editing tools could be triggered by the editing buttons grouped on the left. When needed, editing tools or outline navigation pane could be expanded on the left. Tools that support writing, for example, Grammarly plugin, contextual bibliography suggestion, and schedule tools, etc. could be opened as a pane on the right (Figure 23).

Figure 20. KnowledgeDB Citation Visualization

Figure 21. MindWriter Mind Mapping Space

Figure 22. Composing Space with Project Folder Opened

Figure 23. Various Writing Assistant Tools

4. DISCUSSIONSThe goal of this study was to propose a high-level system framework, an integrated word processing environment that fosters a clear academic writing workflow and facilitates various academic writing activities. Comparing MindWriter’s function features with the six problem domains identified in the user study, the design addressed most of the problems:

Creativity Support – The writing space was divided into three components - MindMap, Compose and Review to match the new writing model specified, reflecting the recursive nature of writing. The MindMap space provided relevant tools to support the important prewriting activities – ideation, brainstorming and mind mapping. This tool allows the user to visually and dynamically build idea blocks, create idea connections and in the end, form the writing project outline.

Writing Guidance and Assistant – Various writing assistant tools were provided in the writing space. For example, the application of template allowed the user to build up writing content based on predefined or past successful writing structure; the integration of Grammarly provided help grammar, contextual spelling, punctuation, writing style, plagiarism check, sentence structure support; contextual bibliography suggestion and writing assistant were also included in the writing assistant toolset. Those design solutions not only provided physical language support but also emotionally encouraged the user to produce text at the early writing stage.

Formatting & Citation – MindWriter sought to provide a practical solution to make formatting, styling and citation style editing fast and easy. We tried to implement it through providing the application of templates, the citation style toggle and citation buttons in the floating menu of the Compose space. However,

due to the limited time available, this solution has not been fully developed.

Collaboration – The system provided collaboration tools, allowing the user and his/her collaborators to work on the writing project simultaneously. The collaboration tools could also dynamically track and show who wrote what when. The “lock” icon introduced in the floating menu allowed the user to lock up the content while editing. The chat box provided in the lower right corner of the writing space allowed the user to communicate ideas conveniently.

Content and Time Management – The integration of reference management tool, the project-based folder system, and the schedule setting and tracking tool, offered the user an integrated writing environment to manage literature, write project-related files, and track the overall writing progress.

Distraction and Engagement – MindWriter provided a maximized user interface for writing by clustering and hiding the full-set editing tools. The embedded ambient music player helped to create immersive writing environment. The application of data visualization helped the user to keep track of the overall writing process, and made the disengagement from other activities to writing easy. The implementation of mind mapping tool and micro-writing cards reflected Dr. Huston’s strategies for preventing writer’s block discussed in the literature review.

At this stage, there were still several design issues remain unsolved. For example, the mind mapping function in this system was to create a hierarchical writing outline. However, in real case scenarios, a free mind mapping tool could be helpful. Many design ideas have not yet been fully implemented. In the future work, it is also necessary to conduct more usability studies to further assess how effective could MindWriter support various academic writing activities. Visual branding strategy, user

experience design pattern, business models and strategies are still waiting to be established.

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