Designing for expansive writing

Writing is often seen as a linear process, with one sentence following another until an idea reaches completion. But thinking is rarely so straightforward. Our minds leap, double back, diverge in various directions, raising the question of what truly makes a supportive writing tool. I contend that it’s less about formatting capabilities and more about the interactions that let thinking loop, branch, and re‑join without losing its pulse. A seamless flow between writing and exploration, where the page bends and evolves as easily as an idea.

When a new writing project starts, we begin with a blank canvas and a scattering of references. we highlight a statistic, clip a chart, paste a link—then watch each fragment drift into separate corners: one in a citation manager, another in a footnote, a third in a folder named _misc‑research_, in a true patchwork . Tangent questions pop up on cue, but pinning them to the sentence that sparked them feels awkward, so you collect sticky notes and neon comments like breadcrumbs you’ll never retrace.

Versions multiply. Context evaporates. _draft‑1_, _draft‑1‑final_, _final‑final‑real_. The document splinters into comically named doubles, obscuring the version history and disrupting the continuity of the work. Without integrated version control, assessing what changed—and why—becomes a scavenger hunt. The relationships between edits, the rationale behind rewrites, the narrative evolution of the document—all dissolve into isolated files with no semantic linkage. But what if a writing tool could preserve this continuity by mapping the document’s lineage, capturing forks, re-merges, and tangents as naturally as the mind produces them?

Writing is as much about the journey toward understanding as it is about the final expression of thought. A piece of writing is never static; it grows from rough scribbles, layered ideas, fleeting insights, a friend’s comment, or the unexpected question that surfaces during revision. The space in which we cultivate this multidimensional thinking should capture and preserve these moments. If we design only for glitzy features and forget this organic rhythm, we end up with tools that celebrate technology more than thought.

As computing pioneer Douglas Engelbart warned, “The better we can define the tools we need, the better our tools will serve us as extensions of our human capabilities.” His reminder still rings true: before racing to integrate the latest tech, we must first imagine the quiet, humane interactions that will let thinking leave its whole breadcrumb trail behind.

The record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. It is this consultation that is now hampered because we have lost the ability to link, to trace, to follow in the wake of thought.

Vannevar Bush, As We May Think (1945)

Tools for Thought - the old desire for augmented tools

The ambition to create tools that amplify *human intellect*—whether through writing systems, symbolic logic, or physical artefacts—has been a longstanding interest, framing a substantial field for exploration today in strategies for cognitive augmentation through interface design. Modern figures and thinkers of the initial computer science move like Figures like Douglas Engelbart, Vannevar Bush, and J.C.R. Licklider are an example.

Nowadays this ambition has been particularly visible in the way new comers and established word processors have implemented some sort of AI, although most often taking the form of a text revision window.

At the same time, it can be tempting to approach this by grabbing that new shiny object in the corner and I would argue that is very much the case with the implementation of large language models in nearly every text editor is perhaps another proof of that. However, this fixation might be stifling a deeper and more fundamental exploration of what would actually support the divergent way we process and synthesise information. The question is:

While AI integration certainly expands the toolset, it is still an external element to the immediacy and serendipity of human thinking. In order to support users in building structured understanding about new topics it is fundamental that the user critically engages with the new domain of knowledge, and thus, designing interactions that aid thought structuring can be far more valuable than AI integrations alone.

To see a writing app as a mere staging area for linear sentences headed to a printer, is to keep the Cartesian split between mind and tool alive. In reality, the objects we handle like (a pen, a phone, a chair), and the interfaces we interact with,  shape us as much as we shape them: their feedback loops seep into our nervous system and guide how we sense, decide, act, and think. Maurice Merleau‑Ponty makes the point in _Phenomenology of Perception_ (1945) with his famous example of the blind person’s cane: after only a few minutes, the cane is no longer experienced as a stick in the hand but as the spot where the pavement itself begins to “touch back.” The tool slips into the body’s perceptual schema, turning distant contact into a seamless extension of self—and the same can happen at the keyboard. When a writing interface responds instantly, holds ideas in flexible spaces, and lets our attention move without friction, the cursor becomes as transparent as the cane’s tip. We stop noticing the software and start feeling the shape of the thought itself.

Designing a writing environment, then, is not just about warehousing text; it is an opportunity to design the interactions needed to augment our experience with textual knowledge so ideas breathe, connect, and grow.

The history of human creativity is, at its heart, the story of turning resistance into hospitality. We plant seeds in land that once refused us food, tame animals that once fled or fought us, and hammer raw ore into utensils that fit the curve of a hand. _Every domesticated plant and animal, every tool, every utensil, every appliance, every work of art,_ philosopher John Dewey reminds us, _represents the conversion of environments once hostile or indifferent into conditions that actively favour human activity._ In other words, design at its best doesn’t merely decorate the world—it recruits the world as an accomplice to our thinking, our making, and our living.

Every domesticated plant and animal, every tool, every utensil, every appliance, every manufactured article, every aesthetic decoration, every work of art means a transformation of conditions once hostile or indifferent to characteristic human activities into friendly and favoring conditions.

John Dewey, [Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2161458) (1916)