Design Recall

About the Design Recall exercise

Copying a shape and later drawing it from memory shows up in ordinary places: sketching the route to a friend's house, drawing where the furniture should go, following a diagram to put a shelf together, or remembering a symbol on a form. After a stroke, a brain injury, or with memory changes, turning what was seen into lines on a page can be slow and effortful.

Design Recall is a free online visual memory and construction exercise. A dot-to-dot design appears on a lattice of dots; in copy mode it stays visible while the person rebuilds it, and in recall mode it shows for a set time, hides, and is rebuilt from memory. Every line is drawn by tapping two dots, so no dragging or steady tracing is needed.

What Design Recall practices

Visuoconstruction

Turning a seen design into a set of lines on the lattice, one segment at a time, keeping track of where each line starts and ends and how the parts join up.

Visual memory

In recall mode the design is only on screen for the exposure time. The shape has to be held as a whole, then rebuilt from that memory, with an optional silent delay in between.

Planning and self-correction

Deciding where to start, when to lift the pen and jump to a new branch, and noticing a wrong line early enough to undo it before pressing check.

How the tool works and what it records

Three free presets: copy a 5 line design, recall a 4 line design after a 10 second look, and study-then-wait with a 10 second exposure and a 10 second delay. Pro unlocks the dials: copy or recall mode, 3 to 5 columns, 3 to 5 rows, 3 to 12 lines, diagonal lines on or off, exposure from 3 to 60 seconds, a delay before drawing of 0 to 30 seconds, and a line count hint. Large-print mode is free.

Tap a dot, then a neighboring dot, to draw a line; tap a far dot to move without drawing; tap the glowing dot to lift the pen. The timer starts on the first tap. Results show time, lines drawn out of the total, missed lines in dashed red, and extra lines in amber. Signed-in users get 5 free rounds per tool per day; Pro removes the cap, adds PDF export of three fresh designs beside empty lattices, and saves rounds to a session log.

Screen or paper?

The screen suits recall practice: the design really disappears at the end of the exposure, a delay can be added, and the drawn lines are compared with the design exactly, with no judgement calls about a wobbly stroke. Paper suits the person for whom pen control is part of the practice, sessions with no device or wifi, and a record of hand-drawn copies to keep and look back through.

The printable version is the Pattern Recall worksheet set on rehabworksheets.com, and there is a free pattern recall worksheet to try first, with no email required.

Using it well

• Start in copy mode. The copy preset keeps the design on screen, so the first rounds are about learning the tap-tap drawing and nothing else. Once a copy comes back with no missed or extra lines, switch to the basic recall preset.
• Add lines before adding dots. More lines on the same lattice is a smaller step than a bigger lattice. Go from 4 lines to 6 on a 3 by 3 before opening up to 4 or 5 columns, and leave diagonals off until straight lines are steady.
• Look at the colored lines, not just the count. After check, green lines were right, dashed red lines were missed, and amber lines were not in the design. A missed corner or a mirrored branch tells a partner more than the totals do.
• Use it when a pen is difficult. Every line is two taps, and a far tap moves the pen without drawing, so one steady finger is enough. Large-print mode widens the tap targets and stays free on every plan.

Common questions