The transformation of text through a chosen perspective, balancing fidelity to the original with the clarity of a different framing. Actors can switch between lenses to reshape how content is presented:
Magnifying lens: Adjust detail level
- Zoom out: summarisation
- Zoom in: elaboration or expansion
Filter lens: Shift tone and style
- Formal ↔ casual
- Technical ↔ accessible
- Assertive ↔ diplomatic
User control
Text lenses can be applied with varying degrees of user control:
- Direct control: Users explicitly select and apply specific lens types
- Contextual suggestions: System recommends appropriate lenses based on content or context
- Automatic application: Lenses applied based on user preferences or situational needs
Examples
Interactive text transformation
The Bubble menu pattern demonstrates text lens application through text selection and transformation. Users can select text and apply different lenses using AI-powered tools to modify content presentation at granular levels.
Consequences
- the reader picks the framing — shorter or longer, formal or plain, technical or accessible — and the original stays underneath as the thing being reframed
- every lens is a rewrite, so what the reader ends up trusting is a generated telling; how far it may drift and whether the source stays reachable become part of the move
- applied automatically the lens decides for the reader what they needed; applied by hand it asks them to know which framing helps before they have read the thing
Resources & references
Appears in
Making sense at scale
- Choosing how to show the collection, step 1 — Generate summaries at several levels
Related patterns
Enables
Complements
- Conversation — filter lenses adapt conversational tone and style based on context and relationship
Related to
- Citation — a summary whose sentences point back into the long document lets the actor go deeper at the relevant passage instead of re-reading
- Instructed revision — a lens changes how the content reads; a revision changes what it is
- Progressive disclosure — lenses reveal or conceal information based on the actor's needs
- Localization — tone adjustment with cultural bounds