Not sure if this goes against a design choice for cleanliness, but I'd love a way to keep Group and Block Synopses visible in the Whiteboard.
(As I assume most do) I use the larger Synopsys as reference for the next layer of granularity (ie: Group Synopsis for keeping my Beats on track), but the only place to see the Group Synopsis is in the info column off on the far right side of the screen - which is enough of a "look away" to pull me out of my flow.
I'd love to have the option to show Block or Group Synopsis' in place in the Whiteboard, under the Block / Group title, essentially directly above where I'm entering the beats.
Barring that, maybe a solution that would be easier to implement would be to make that info column undockable so I can put it closer to the action.
I am new to Causality and just figuring out my workflow, so I'm open to other existing solutions if anyone has any.
Hi and welcome!
Indeed, neither solution is very good. Looking into the inspector is awkward. For myself as a user, my eye almost never goes there, it might as well not exist. Sidenote, the inspector might actually go away in favor of popup panels like Shot Designer, because inspectors don't really work on mobile.
I do think it's super-crowded to print all of the block and group synopsis.
But spitballing, because of the timeline cursor in the whiteboard, there's always some notion of a "current" block or a "current" group, simply by where the cursor is placed. So maybe you could imagine a floating panel that just shows stats or info for where you are. Then such a panel could show the synopsis for the currently active blocks and groups, or word count or whatever.
And immediate downside to such a panel is that it would change a lot as you're scrolling, so things will never really be in the same place graphically. So this means that you can't simply glance over, because if you suddenly have three active blocks, then thing you're looking for is suddenly the third one down where it used to be the first. So there's a lot of cognitive drag on reading and understanding such a panel.
Another option is just tooltips. If you're OK using your mouse. But this doesn't work on mobile, where hover isn't a thing.
I understand why you want the feature. I don't immediately have an idea for a smooth way to do it. The reality is that even though we all want this or that information at our fingertips, it takes more than that for it to work. In my life, I've made an endless parade of info panels or indicators or colors or icons that are supposed to communicate info to you. But it only works in the mockup. The moment you process it at full speed while using an app, none of it goes into your brain, and at the same time, the cognitive load goes up, so it's harder to interpret everything else. Information design is hard, and we tend to lean away from putting things in unless we're confident that they'll communicate clearly at full speed. Most ideas fail that test, and the trick is to find out before you spend a month building a feature.
Think about it some more, and maybe there's an insight to be had.
PS: I've come up with a temporary workaround, which is to create a Beat at the top of each group, and "name" it with the Group synopsis. Then I tag that Beat with #Synopsis and hide that tag from the Script pane using a filter. This works fine, but feels a bit clunky and could add to more mess later on when the script gets more complicated.