Information Design
While few designers have been explicitly concerned with the issues paramount to clear communication-Organization, Presentation, Goals and Messages, Clarity, and Complexity to name a few-these functions have been addressed at least on a subconscious level by everyone who attempts to organize their thoughts and communicate them. Information Design doesn't banish aesthetic concerns but it doesn't focus on them either. Most important to communication are the issues listed above. However, there is also no reason why elegantly structured, or well architect, data can't also be beautiful. Information Design isn't meant to replace Graphic and other Visual Disciplines, but to be the structure for which these capabilities are expressed.
An understanding of understanding must begin with the view that what most of us deal with everyday-the vast amount of things that bombard our senses-is not information at all, but merely data. Richard Saul Wurman expresses this well. Data is fairly worthless to most of us. It is the product of research or creation (such as writing) but it is not an adequate product for communicating. To have value, it must be organized, transformed, and presented in a way that gives it meaning-that makes it valuable.
Information is also not the end of the continuum of understanding. Just as data can be transformed into meaningful information, so can information be transformed into knowledge and then further, into wisdom. Knowledge is a phenomenon that we can build for others just as we can build information for others from data. This is done through Interaction Design and the creation of experiences. This will be discussed more in the next section, but think for a moment how hard it is to build a meaningful experience for someone else. It is first necessary to understanding who that audience is, what their needs, abilities, interests, and expectations are, and how to reach them. Brenda Laurel often states that interactive media "is not about information, it is about experience." She is absolutely correct, but I would argue that in creating these experiences for others (and even for ourselves to some degree), we must understand and structure the information (and data) with which we use to build these experiences.
Brenda Laurel is one of the most qualified interface designers in the industry and the biggest proponent of designing experiences. Her edited book, The Art of Human Computer Interface Design is a great place to start and her book Computers as Theater is a good place to continue.
Copyright 1994 Nathan Shedroff
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