SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, San Francisco based tech startup, Asymmetrica (asym.co) announced the release of their first product, “Asym.” Asym, a free browser plug-in available for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox reformats English text, in real time, creating asymmetrical word spacing that provides subtle incremental visual cues to help readers chunk text into meaningful units. These cues correspond to text locations where the brain would naturally pause during sentence comprehension.
The patent pending technology leverages data models to analyze how the language of the reader’s content is organized and then asymmetrically reformats word spaces to make reading easier, faster, and more engaging. The formatting technology is flexible, with multiple comprehensive models and live adjustment factors that support any content.
“The technique of emphasizing units of meaning with visual cues has been laboratory and field-tested by scientists in a variety of disciplines for more than 60 years in dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles,” says Chris Nicholas, Cofounder & President of Asymmetrica. “Studies show that application of this technique improves reading speed and comprehension by up to 40%.”
Asymmetrica offers the first scalable service to augment reading on the web since the advent of HTML nearly 25 years ago. “Asym will help everyone, especially struggling, tired, or distracted readers. 43% of Americans have low literacy according the U.S. Department of Education and Asym will help them read faster, retain more, and enjoy reading more,” says Ken Brownfield, Cofounder & CTO of Asymmetrica.
In addition to the browser plug-in available to consumers, any company can integrate Asym directly into their website. Asymmetrica’s API’s support seamless processing for all text, creating more readable and engaging content. No special reader application or SDK is required. To download the free browser plug-in, visit www.asym.co.
About Asymmetrica
Asymmetrica Labs was founded in 2014 in Max Levchin’s innovation and investment lab, HVF. Our mission is to provide unobtrusive, large-scale reading improvement for web and print media. To download the free browser plug-in or to find more information, visit www.asym.co.
