In some inner circles the terms “Information Design” has been around for a long time. There are even famous “information designers” such as Edward Tufte at Yale University, the author of Envisioning Information and possibly the inventor of the term.
So why am I inviting you into these inner circles? An information system known as the Internet has pushed its way into your space. You have a website and you may or may not be prepared to deal with anything called Information Design. Here is some help.
Tufte alone has written seven books touching this subject, so I will not presume to encapsulate it here. My goal is to alert you to the existence and depth of this field, while also providing the rudiments for evaluating Information Design in your business application, database application, or website.
Here are two websites by GORGES that show just what Information Design deals with. The first site, http://birdsandbayous.org, is so simple that information design is little more than not making basic mistakes or omissions. There are only a few “information points” and only a basic navigation is needed to reach these points and return from them. This information design is analogous to the chapter ordering in a very small book.
The Martha Stewart site, http://www.marthastewart.com, is on a different planet. Every graphic and text object on this home page is a link to something, and amazingly, it all makes sense. It is visually organized to lead the visitor comfortably through dense information.
Note further, that much of the home page information is layered on top of other information and the visitor is invited to interact with it – to engage.
So it is dense, multi-layered, diverse, and interactive.
Your website’s complexity probably lies somewhere between the Birds and Bayous website and Martha Stewart’s. What can you learn from these two sites to help you evaluate your website or work with your website designers? Here’s one thing:
Insist that when presenting a design to you the designer makes at least three systematic passes across the demo pages in some carefully ordered, slow-paced way.
• In the first pass you should be told both “how” and “why” the information design suits your information set.
• In the second pass you should be told both “how” and “why” the graphic design suits you information set, as well as “how” and “why” it is appropriate to your brand and your communication intention for each of the audiences you have identified.
• In the third pass the designer needs to explain how the graphic design and information designs reinforce each other.
For the best result, allow the designers to make the points above without interruption and then go through it all again in a question and answer format. Good designers seek good criticism.
Here’s one more information design evaluation thing:
Ask two or three innocents to do the “What do you see?” test. With the page hidden, tell them you are going to ask them what they see first. Show the page. Then ask what they see second. You will get variation from person to person, but not much. Do this for the home page and for several subordinate pages. Does the visual prioritizing match your message plan?
My next posting will be also about Information Design – searching for information.