Introduction
While reading (well it was an audiobook, but saying reading makes it sound smarter) a book on system design they made an interesting point on why they stated that for their book a visual pdf was a requirement. This made me think about how with complex systems using just words will inherently lead to poor mental models. When you read something it is entirely linear. That means you cannot reach key points until you reach that sentence. Images on the other hand could give you a full picture at once. If you’re given a venn diagram, you don’t see the one thing first, you kind of see the bigger picture all at once. Granted you must know what a Venn Diagram represents. Also granted that you could look at something first but due to the structure of the image and the nature of the Venn Diagram, you also know that the “weight” of the circle you’re focusing on is the same as the other circles.