Explorable Explanations

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social
Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social
Data visualisation engineer @planet

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Explorable Explanations
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explorable explanations
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Intro
What’s inside?
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Explorable Explanations are interactive articles that lend elements from gamification and storytelling to explain complex issues and educate users in an interactive way. Take a deep dive into some engaging examples and learn about the techniques behind this novel way of publishing and explaining.


Maarten Lambrechts (@maartenzam) is a data visualisation consultant based in Belgium. He knows his way around web development and (data) journalism and has a scientific background: 3 ingredients of many explorable explanations. He created the @explorables Twitter account, and built Rock 'n Poll, an explorable explanation about political polling.

  • Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten… and 9 other articles
  • Average reading time: 9 minutes
  • Topics covered: learning, coronavirus, interactive, math, mathematics
  • Read or listen to articles
  • From experts like Bret Victor, Nicky Case · 🐘 mas.to/@ncase, and more
  • You want to learn something new and are looking for a good, compact introduction.
  • You want to sharpen your skills on something you got into recently.
  • You want to catch up on a topic that has been in the news lately.
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Glad to see you made it all the way through this Deep Dive. We hope you found it useful and can put some of the insights to good use in your own daily life.

How does it work?

Day 1
...
Day 10
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Deep Dives are carefully hand-curated series of time-tested articles and videos from around the web.

We’ll guide you through, one link per day, every morning in your inbox.

Deep Dives come in bites that are short enough to fit in your day...

...but add up to a satisfying learning experience.

The article that kicked of explorable explanations, by Bret Victor (@worrydream). It's very meta: It is in itself an explorable explanation too.

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

A very playful explorable explanation about segregation, by Nicky Case (@ncasenmare) and Vi Hart (@vihartvihart). This article made explorable explanations known to a wider audience.

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

Explorable explanations applied to math education. Brands itself as the «textbook of the future».

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

An article unravelling the encoding and compression behind the jpeg file format. Published in the first issue of the Parametric Press, a yearly magazine «digital magazine dedicated to showcasing the expository power that’s possible when the audio, visual, and interactive capabilities of dynamic media are effectively combined.»

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

The most viewed article on the Washington Post is an explorable explanation about the spread of contagious diseases. It is light on interactive controls (not so many «explorable» features), but the simulations are crystal clear and add another dimension to the text explanations.

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

An explorable experiment about birthday statistics, in which you participate yourself. Published on The Pudding, a medium that has published already many explorable explanations, mainly on cultural topics like music, movies, sports and fashion.

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

A research paper trying to synthesize the theory of designing interactive articles from different fields. Contains a corpus of over sixty interactive articles.

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

The most extensive collections of examples and resources about explorable explanations. Managed by Nicky Case (@ncasenmare).

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social

Nicky Case, author of so many explorable explanations, shares how she approaches the development of her interactive articles.

Maarten Lambrechts @maarten@vis.social