Bionic Reading is an excellent system that revises texts so that the most concise parts of words are highlighted. This guides the eye over the text and the brain remembers previously learned words more quickly. The eye is guided through the text by means of typographic highlights. With the interplay of “Fixation”, “Saccade” and “Opacity” visual stimuli can be transferred to the text, which decisively change the typeface. The company has an online convertor that will take your existing ebooks and convert them to the new text system. A couple of months ago they released apps for Android and iOS. This week, Bionic Reading has just won a major award from the German Design Council.
In a statement from the the jury, Rat für Formgebung – German Design Council: “Modern people are confronted with an abundance of digital texts every day that require a lot of time to read and understand. The Bionic Reading app helps to read texts faster and thus takes the stress out of everyday life. The system highlights first letters in the text, which the eye sees more quickly than the whole word. The brain completes the missing part of the word. This makes it easy to skim through texts without missing important details. As this way of reading trains the brain with each word, reading becomes increasingly fluent and faster. The level of difficulty can be individually adjusted to the needs of the reader and continuously increased. It’s a fascinating tool that not only saves a lot of time but also impressively demonstrates what our brain is capable of.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
