Grouping not only improves readability but also enhances comprehension, reader retention, and engagement.
Getting Started Guide
As part of our digital storytelling, we group related elements together in color blocks with rounded corners. We call these “lily pads” as they are pads from which spectacular things bloom. Like biological lily pads, they are springboards and landing places. Further, lily pads develop from a rhizome, evoking the autistic rhizome.
Our web pages are constructed from lily pads sprouting from the rhizome of collected community knowledge.
The Autistic rhizome creates new energy through the sharing and evolution of ideas which permeates and ripples through into wider society. A rhizome is a root system of pure connections.
Autistic Rhizome
@Autistic Realms
A growing and evolving network of Autistic communities with no hierarchy or dependence on anothers existence.
Each person forms an integral part and is connected by a flow of energy that not only runs through and between individuals and communities but enables new connections to form. It is a place of safety, support and deep understanding.
The Autistic rhizome creates new energy through the sharing and evolution of ideas which permeates and ripples through into wider society.
Rhizome: as conceptualised in the work of Deleuze and Guatarri. A network with no single point of origin. No part of the network depends upon the existence of another. I have introduced the idea of this in the context of community here.
Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy
On discord, there is a growing network of communities. I have lovingly dubbed this collective The Autistic Rhizome. They are an interconnected network of knowledge exchange, and mutual aid and support that have displaced the hierarchical nature of advocate/follower relationships.
We are equal in these spaces.
This doesn’t mean that all knowledge shared is useful in advancing the neurodiversity movement. Like any knowledge, some is good, some is bad, most is somewhere in the middle.
This growing network consists of communities that do not depend on each other to exist, but are still enriched by their interconnection. There is no starting or end point. There is no advancing through communities based on levels of knowledge. They just simply exist, and people come and go as they please.
Neuro-anarchy and the rise of the Autistic Rhizome – DGH Neurodivergent Consultancy
In order to explore the nature of our ever growing and developing Autistic culture, we need to be looking to the Autistic rhizome, detached from a non-existent central point, exploring new theory, and building on what exists. We need to surprise the world with each new thought, not repackage the same thought over and over.
Autistic Culture and the Advent of Decentralised Communities – Stimpunks Foundation
Deleuze and Guattari described this kind of thinking as ‘Rhyzomatic.’
A rhyzome isn’t like a tree, it doesn’t have subordinate parts emerging from a core trunk. A rhizome is a root system of pure connections.
How the things connect is how they are defined. By the same logic, how they are disconnected is how they are defined.
Deleuze differed from the poststructuralists like Derrida and Foucault in that he was a Monist. All of it is connected, all of it is one, and the connections and lack of connections between the things, are what define them as things. This is an Ontology of Difference.
Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube
A punk bass line. With all the space for ingenuity and contributions.
Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube
Lily pads improve skimmability and aid cognitive accessibility.
Readers on the web scan for information, rather than reading everything line-by-line. Chunking your content into smaller sections, called out by larger headings, helps them find the information they’re searching for.
When I’m trying to find something quickly, there’s nothing more intimidating than jumping onto a site with a giant wall of unbroken content.
Show, Don’t Tell | CSS-Tricks – CSS-Tricks
What, Why, How?
What they are:
Lily pads are small, digestible stepping stones that let readers pause, process, and choose their next move. On Stimpunks.org, lily pads are implemented as colored blocks or grouped sections to make the structure visually clear.
How to use them:
- Break dense content into labeled and bounded subsections.
- Use colored blocks/groups as visual landing points.
- Add anchors or signposts to indicate progression.
- Include optional “Go deeper” or expandable sections.
- Insert intentional whitespace for pause-and-reflect moments.
Why it matters:
Lily pads reduce cognitive load, support neurodivergent attention patterns, and let readers navigate content at their own pace. They transform complex ideas into approachable, visual stepping stones.
Lily Padding — A Compassionate Support for Change
At Stimpunks, lily pads are more than layout tools — they are embodied support structures for minds in motion. The term comes from recognizing that many autistic and neurodivergent people think in monotropic, high-focus, deep-engagement patterns. When environments demand rapid attention shifts, abrupt transitions, or cumulative memory load, that shift itself becomes trauma in motion — not a personal deficit.
Lily padding is the practice of reducing that transitional trauma by design:
creating spaces, visible anchors, and stepping stones that let attention — and experience — land gently instead of being yanked between points.
In practice, lily padding means:
- Chunked information — small, labeled blocks that hold one idea at a time.
- Visual anchors — colored groups, clear headings, signposts, and whitespace that show where meaning lives.
- Pause points — intentional breaks that let a body or nervous system settle before moving on.
- Paths, not hurdles — choices about where to go next, not forced progression.
- Recognition over recall — familiar shapes and patterns that help people see meaning without holding it in memory.
This mirrors what many autistic thinkers describe as monotropic focus: deep attention on a theme at a time, rather than scattershot switching. Lily padding respects that by letting folks land, stay, and return without friction — much like stepping stones across water give the walker safe, visible places to rest between banks.
At its heart, lily padding is about compassionate change support:
no one should have to pay with stress, trauma, or exhaustion just because information or context shifts. By offering places to land, we help readers and learners navigate transitions gently, with agency and dignity.
This is why, at Stimpunks:
- We design with lily pads on every long page.
- We break transitions into visible steps.
- We assume attention and energy fluctuate — not pathological, just real.
And because interdependence is survival, these lily pads are not private coping tools alone — they are public infrastructure that make shared understanding possible. Lily padding isn’t about slowing down for its own sake — it’s about making change survivable and humane.
Lily Pads, Collaborative Niche Construction, and Cavendish Space
At Stimpunks, lily pads are more than layout choices — they are designed landing places for thought, attention, and memory. They embody how we make spaces that work for real minds in real conditions, and they connect deeply to our wider concepts of collaborative niche construction and Cavendish Space.
Lily pads are collaborative niche infrastructure inside Cavendish space.
Lily pads are micro-infrastructure inside a collaboratively shaped environment.
Lily pads are how collaborative niche construction becomes usable inside Cavendish space.
They are built landing points for memory, attention, and meaning — shaped by community and designed for diverse neurocognitive realities. Like organisms that alter their environment to survive and thrive, we intentionally shape content environments so that people don’t struggle against context, they engage within it.
What Unites These Ideas
All three — lily pads, niche construction, and Cavendish Space — are about actively shaping environments so that people can thrive instead of merely endure. They reject the idea that people must adapt to inhospitable contexts. Instead, they ask: How do we redesign context itself?
Lily Pads as Built Environments
Just as organisms shape their surroundings to reduce harm and support living needs, lily pads serve as intentional structures within content and space that make navigation, learning, and recall possible:
- Visual anchors for attention
- Chunked meaning that supports cognition
- Pause points for processing
- Paths with options rather than one forced route
These features turn an otherwise overwhelming environment into a series of manageable stepping stones — a niche that respects neurodivergent, disabled, and fluctuating attention states.
Collaborative Niche Construction
In ecology, niche construction refers to how living beings change their environment, altering both their conditions and evolutionary pathways. At Stimpunks, we do this together:
- Contributors, readers, and community members co-construct pathways, explanations, and tools
- We build content that changes how context feels and functions
- Each lily pad is a structural piece of that shared niche — a place where memory, focus, and meaning are supported
Instead of assuming a single, universal reader, we design for diversity — overtly and collaboratively — just as organisms shape ecosystems to meet real conditions.
Cavendish Space
Cavendish Space is the relational space where conditions, context, and capacities interact. It acknowledges that people don’t bring empty minds into neutral environments — they bring bodies, sensory needs, histories, and social positions that interact with context in dynamic ways. Lily pads are structural supports inside Cavendish Space:
- They are visible zones of stability within dynamic cognitive terrain
- They acknowledge that meaning is negotiated, not just delivered
- They allow people to enter, exit, linger, and return on their own terms
Instead of forcing users into a rigid temporal or structural flow, lily pads create modular space inside Cavendish Space that respects individual pacing, context shifts, and embodied attention differences.
Why This Matters
If niche construction is about shaping environments to fit life, lily pads are a micro-scale expression of that philosophy in practice. They are collaborative — shaped by editorial intention, community feedback, and lived experience — and they create usable space within complex content. They honor not only what we’re saying but how people can absorb it. In Cavendish Space, it’s not enough to present information; we must design the conditions for people to engage with it humanely.
How Lily Pads Support Memory Craft
In Memory Craft, memory works best when it’s supported by the environment — when ideas have places to land, rest, and be picked up again. At Stimpunks, lily pads are one of the main ways we do that.
Lily pads support Memory Craft by giving ideas clear places to land, rest, and be found again. They break information into visually distinct, self-contained blocks that reduce cognitive load, support recognition over recall, and make non-linear reading possible. Because lily pads are implemented as colored groups or blocks, readers can pause, skim, leave, and return without losing orientation or being forced to hold context in working memory. This shifts the burden of remembering from the reader to the environment — a core Memory Craft principle — and makes the site more usable for neurodivergent, disabled, fatigued, or interrupted readers.
Lily pads work like modern illuminated manuscripts: just as medieval scribes used images, color, and layout to help readers remember and navigate complex texts, lily pads use colored blocks and distinct groups to anchor ideas on the page. They give concepts clear places to land, reduce cognitive load, and support recognition over recall, letting readers pause, skim, leave, and return without losing orientation. By turning memory into a feature of the environment instead of a burden on the reader, lily pads make Stimpunks.org usable for neurodivergent, disabled, or interrupted readers — guiding attention and understanding like visual cues in a manuscript once did.
Lily Pads Create Places to Land
Lily pads are intentional pauses: short, self-contained blocks that hold one idea, definition, or takeaway. They let readers stop without losing their place — a core Memory Craft principle. You don’t have to carry the whole page in your head to keep going.
This supports readers who:
- read in bursts
- get interrupted
- experience fatigue or overload
- need to step away and return later
Memory is preserved in the page, not demanded from the reader.
Lily Pads Support Recognition Over Recall
Memory Craft favors recognition (seeing something familiar) over recall (pulling it from memory). Lily pads help by:
- visually grouping ideas
- repeating key concepts in consistent formats
- making important ideas easy to spot again
When you return, you don’t have to remember — you just recognize where you were.
Lily Pads Reduce Cognitive Load
Dense text requires working memory. Lily pads reduce that load by:
- chunking information into digestible units
- separating “core idea” from “supporting detail”
- allowing readers to skip, skim, or focus selectively
This aligns with Memory Craft’s emphasis on environmental scaffolding over mental strain.
Lily Pads Enable Non-Linear Reading
Memory Craft rejects the idea that learning must be linear. Lily pads:
- allow readers to move around a page
- support jumping in at different points
- make partial reading valid and productive
You can build understanding gradually, out of order, and over time.
Lily Pads Hold Memory Between Visits
Because lily pads are visually distinct and conceptually bounded, they act as memory anchors across sessions. Readers often remember:
- that box
- that color
- that short definition
Even if the exact words are forgotten, the structure remains — and structure carries memory.
In Short
Lily pads turn memory from a personal burden into a shared design responsibility. They give ideas somewhere to rest, readers somewhere to pause, and memory something to attach to — which is exactly what Memory Craft asks environments to do.
The important lesson for all of those wanting to memorise huge amounts of information is that the Navajo store this knowledge in their mythology. In stories. Vivid lively stories make information more memorable.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
But memory, writing and technology can all enhance each other.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
I’ll explain how these methods correlate with the most recent discoveries in neuroscience, which show that associating memory with place is hardwired into our brains. This common factor is why cultures all over the world have developed similar methods: they are working with the same brain structure. The neuroscience explains how we benefit from repetition and music, and in particular the value of memory palaces.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
One of the most important lessons I have learned from indigenous cultures is the value of strong characters in stories. I cannot emphasise enough how useful this is.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
many objects interpreted simply as artworks are mnemonic landscapes in miniature.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
If you want to remember what you’ve written down then take the lessons offered in the medieval manuscripts and turn your page into a memory space.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
The wilder, the more colourful and active, the more grotesque, vulgar or erotic the images and stories you create are, the more memorable they will be. That is the secret to making knowledge memorable.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
To memorise any information, you need to first organise it into little chunks that flow in a logical order.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
The big lesson of this chapter is: don’t make nice neat notes. Decorate and doodle all over them.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
As in classical times, memory training involved associating information with emotionally striking images in a set of ordered physical locations.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
The elaborately decorated lists of numbers were written between illustrations of columns with arches above, reflecting the ancient memory advice to use inter-columnar spaces as locations for memory images. The vertical spaces between the columns were then divided by horizontal lines into small rectangular spaces, each holding no more than five items, the maximum number suggested for retaining in memory for a single location.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
The secret to memorising anything is to break the information down into memorable portions; just focus on a snippet at a time.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
The efficacy of short sentences on a memorable page resonates with my experience as a teacher. I have found that students who read an entire paragraph of information quickly will often claim they didn’t understand it, but if they read it phrase by phrase, stopping at each comma or full stop to ensure they understand, the entire paragraph becomes meaningful. With short sentences, you are forced to engage with each element of the information and not try to grasp the whole in a single befuddling quest.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
A page of neat and tidy typed text in long paragraphs is the least memorable format known. You need to reduce it into small segments, each made memorable by flourishes and fancy layouts. Add colour and doodles. Highlight. Enclose with clouds. Write the whole portion backwards. Do anything to make each logical entity, each verse, distinct.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
Music is a powerful memory aid. How much better do you remember songs from your youth than the things you read? Then there’s that incredibly annoying tune you can’t get out of your head. So why not make that tune about something you want to remember and welcome its presence?
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
What I learned from indigenous cultures was that if I wanted to use my memory effectively, I should incorporate song, dance, mythological stories and wildly emotive images. And, of course, there was the universal implementation of memory palaces.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
The more vivid and wild and unusual and grotesque you make your images associated with the memory palace, the more likely the process is to succeed. Mundane information won’t excite your brain, but characters and stories and wild ideas will.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
We’ve seen that research shows that neuroscience and indigenous memory methods both advise the same things: your memory is going to be helped immensely if you use regular repetition, vivid stories, song, imagination, emotion and memory palaces. Indigenous cultures have mythological characters acting out every story, song and ceremony for a very good reason. Learning that lesson was some of the best fun of all.
Memory Craft a book by Lynne Kelly
Reducing Transitional Trauma for Monotropic Minds
Tanya Adkin conceptualised another framing of lili-padding to reduce transitional trauma for monotropic people.
Lilipadding is built on consent, pacing, and attunement. It’s a relational practice. It’s about offering subtle nudges rather than sudden shocks. It’s a bridge between states—honouring the current tunnel of attention while gently inviting the next.
Lilipadding: Not a Hack, A Lifeline
It’s not a demand, it’s a stepping stone. Designed with the person, not at them.
Lilipadding isn’t about getting autistic people to comply with transition. It’s about supporting capacity.
