Photoshop for text. In our #CHI2025 paper “Textoshop”, we explore how interactions inspired by drawing software can help edit text. We consider words as pixels, sentences as regions, and tones as colours. #HCI #NLProc #LLMs #AI Thread 🧵 (1/10)

Just like you can resize and rotate shapes by manipulating their corners, in Textoshop, you can resize a text selection to lengthen or shorten a passage. Or, you can rotate the passage to change the order of the words and the structure of the sentence. 👇 (2/10)

Just like intelligent tools transform and enhance the image, in Textoshop, intelligent tools help modify the text. For example, you can smudge the text to paraphrase it, repair to fix the grammar, or copy the tone of a passage using a tone picker. 👇 (3/10)

Just like colours are explored in a colour wheel, in Textoshop, tones are explored in a tone picker which offers a 3D space to browse thousands of tone variations for a single passage of text. 👇 (4/10)

But this analogy goes beyond tools and also extends to workflows. Just like only what is on the canvas is part of the final image, in Textoshop, text can be moved so that the margin becomes an experimentation zone that can also store text for inspiration or future use. 👇 (5/10)

Just like shapes can be combined using boolean operations, in Textoshop, two passages of text can be “united” to merge ideas, “intersected” to keep common ideas, “subtracted” to remove ideas, or “excluded” to keep unshared ideas. 👇 (6/10)

And just like images are organized in layers, in Textoshop, “text layers” do not simply overlay text but also cause a reflow of the whole document. This makes them powerful to organize the text and manage different versions. 👇 (7/10)

In a user study with both guided and free-form tasks, we found participants transferred their knowledge of drawing software onto Textoshop to the point where they guessed how to use its features and followed new workflows, although it was not always a good thing. (8/10)

Textoshop reimagines text editing. We encourage others to use interaction analogies to revisit existing workflows when designing software. 📝Paper: 🎥Video: 🖥️Code: 🕹️Demo: (9/10)

This work was done during my postdoc with @fanny_uoft in collaboration with @YounghoHCI. I will present this work at CHI2025 on Tuesday, 29, April at 2:10PM in the session “Text Entry”. Come find me in Yokohama if you want to chat! (10/10)

it's happening

Incredible

Tbf, this is the coolest LLM-based writing tool I've seen for a while.

This is brilliant

Color me impressed

Incredible work and I can't wait to try it.

What a refreshingly innovative approach to writing! This transforms how the craft is approached. Love the clever thinking and where this could lead. Excellent work.

@thesephist

Amazing concept!

Brilliant concept 👏

superb

This is incredibly cool!

10/10 idea!

Very very cool!

Great work 🔥

incredibly cool work!!

this is awesome

@FlorianGallwitz vielleicht interessant für Sie s. o.

@threadreaderapp unroll please

this is the right place to use it? correct?

@YVinker