Information Design is all about the psychology and physiology of how users access, learn, and remember information; the impact of colors, shapes, and patterns, learning styles.
Information Design takes pride in analyzing and identifying what works, what doesn't and why, in those situations where information is to be easily understood and comprehended.
Information Design usually encompasses many different responsibilities and tasks, including:
a) Analysis of users' needs and learning styles
b) Selection of the most effective layouts, colors, fonts, and graphics
c) Identification of most effective navigational infrastructures
d) Application of principles of simplification, synthesis and integration
e) Testing of readability, contrast and legibility in adverse situations and for handicapped users
Information Design is a distinct area of interest in respect to Information Architecture and Information Planning.
Here is a brief definition of three Information Arts and how they relate to each other:
1) Information Architecture deals with organizing information at the lowest level into usable information structures. IA analyzes content, and groups it according to user profiles and communication goals. IA responsibility is the one of guaranteeing integrity and functionality in how information blocks are organized and interlinked in an information system (Web site, CD-ROM, etc.).
2) Information Planning focuses on all aspects required to prepare and support the information delivery of a specific set of information products over a set time span. This generally includes understanding the product goals, studying the audience and their needs, considering possible alternative delivery media, defining specific information "units" (books, chapters, Web pages, etc.). In this area of interest, one would also include the identification of appropriate human resources, specifications of job roles and profiles, definition of time plans and logistics.
3) Information Design specifically focuses on the information itself in one or more information units, and usually it encompasses the information aspects of industrial, identity and graphic design, content design, page design, Web page design, composition, illustration and typography.
The practice of information design invites questions of how people learn or prefer to learn and how they use information.
It also raises questions about how to design information for different cultural and various other contextual differences in the audience.
Information is now frequently delivered utilizing electronic media such as Web sites and CD-ROMs (with new possibilities for user interaction). A new discipline has emerged which deals with these aspects of information design from a user-centered point of view: Interaction Design.
[Definition of Information Design authored by Michael Lawlor] for WhatIs?com website at
http://whatis.techtarget.com
Yale University offers the Yale Style Manual, an information design guide for Web site creators at
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/
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Luigi Canali De Rossi's Information Design
Recommended Reading List
by Prof. Edward Tufte
Envisioning Information
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Visual Explanations : Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
By Karen Schriver
Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text for Readers
By Marlana Coe
Human Factors for Technical Communicators
By Charles Kostelnick, David D. Roberts
Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators (Part of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication)
You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.
