Quest Ladder
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Quest Ladder / Visuals
Visuals without uploading images
Most pictures in a question can be written rather than uploaded, and the written ones are better.
A drawn diagram varies with the question. A photograph never will.
Why not just upload a picture
Uploading a screenshot is the fastest thing to do once and the slowest thing to live with. A written diagram beats it on four counts, and the fourth is the one that matters for the Quest Ladder.
It stays sharp
A drawn diagram renders crisply on a phone and a projector alike. A screenshot is one resolution forever.
It can be corrected
A wrong label is an edit, not a round trip through whatever tool made the picture.
It translates
Text in a drawn diagram can be translated. Text baked into an image cannot.
It varies
It can be built from your dynamic variables, so the picture matches the numbers in that version of the question.
Which tool for which picture
| You want | Use |
|---|---|
| Emphasis, lists, a little structure | Markdown |
| An equation, a matrix, a derivation | LaTeX (Display) or LaTeX (Inline) |
| A geometric figure, a circuit, a labelled construction | TikZ Diagram |
| A flowchart, a sequence, a tree | Mermaid Diagram |
| A bar chart, a scatter, a plotted function | Chart |
| A table of values | Data Table |
| Something a learner can move and explore | D3 Interactive |
| A drawing that is genuinely bespoke | SVG Graphic, or build it in the Workshop |
When the block is not enough
The blocks in the question editor are the quick route. The Workshop stations are the full ones: the same kinds of content with far more tooling around them, and an object built there can be inserted into a question with Library.
The rule of thumb is that anything you will use once belongs in the block, and anything you will use across several questions belongs in the Workshop where it can be saved, reused and improved in one place.
When a photograph is the right answer
Sometimes the picture is the evidence: a real specimen, a historical document, a piece of apparatus as it actually is. Drawing those would be a lie about what they look like.
When you do upload, upload the largest clean version you have and check it at the size a learner sees. That matters most for hotspot and labelling questions, where the hit radius is set against the displayed image rather than the original.
The in-app Visuals without uploading images guide has a worked example of each, side by side, which is the fastest way to see the difference.