Content uploaded by Ginny Redish
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Ginny Redish on Mar 12, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
COMMENTARY
SUMMARY
䉬Defines two meanings of information design:
the overall process and the presentation of
information on page and on screen
䉬Predicts the future importance of both meanings
of information design, in terms of design for the
Web and single-sourcing
What Is Information Design?
JANICE C. (GINNY) REDISH
INTRODUCTI‘ON
STC’s Special Interest Group on Information De-
sign was founded in 1997. A scant 3 years later, it
has over 2,700 members. That astonishing and
rapid growth is testimony to the widespread in-
terest in the topic and is deeply gratifying to those of us
who have thought of ourselves as information designers for
many years.
What do those 2,700 SIG members mean by informa-
tion design? As Beth Mazur says about plain language in
her article in this issue, “Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10
different answers.”
In part, the differences in those answers may reflect the
backgrounds of the people answering the question. Infor-
mation design, like many other aspects of technical com-
munication, draws on many research disciplines and many
fields of practice, including anthropology and ethnogra-
phy, architecture, graphic design, human factors and cog-
nitive psychology, instructional design and instructional
technology, linguistics, organizational psychology, rheto-
ric, typography, and usability.
THE TWO MEANINGS OF INFORMATION DESIGN
In part, the differences in definitions may reflect an ambiguity
between using design in a very broad sense and, at the same
time, in a narrower sense (see Redish 1999). I and—I sus-
pect—many others within the Information Design SIG use
information design, perhaps at different times, to mean
1. The overall process of developing a successful
document
2. The way the information is presented on the
page or screen (layout, typography, color, and so forth)
Using the same term for the whole and a part of that
whole violates a guideline of good writing, but the fact is
that the term information design means both. (A little later
in this commentary, I briefly describe a historical reason for
this dual usage, at least within the North American techni-
cal communication community.)
INFORMATION DESIGN AS THE OVERALL PROCESS
My definition of document design or information design
has always been, first and foremost, the “whole.” Informa-
tion design is what we do to develop a document (or
communication) that works for its users. Working for its
users means that the people who must or want to use the
information can
䉬Find what they need
䉬Understand what they find
䉬Use what they understand appropriately
This definition comes with two additional points that in-
formation designers must always remember:
䉬Most of the time, most users of functional informa-
tion are using that information to reach a personal
goal—to answer a question or to complete a task.
䉬The users, not the information designer, decide how
much time and effort to spend trying to find and
understand the information they need.
To develop a successful document (or any other type of
product, such as a Web site, software application, or hard-
ware device) requires a process that starts with understand-
ing what you are trying to achieve, who will use it, how
they will use it, and so on.
When I drew a model (flowchart, job aid) for that
process in 1978, I called it the “document design process.”
Today it might well be called the “information design
process.” The model has been updated many times over
the years based on experience, conversations with col-
leagues and clients, and changes that make it more appro-
priate for different media, but many characteristics have
remained through all the permutations of the model, espe-
cially:
䉬The importance of the planning questions and of the
front-end analysis
䉬The role of iterative evaluation
䉬The interaction and equal importance of writing and
presentation (the other, narrower, meaning of infor-
mation design)
䉬The fact that the specific guidelines that one uses
depend on the answers to the planning questions
(That is, there is no one best design for all situa-
tions.)
Figure 1 is an example of a recent version of this model.
Second Quarter 2000
•
Technical
COMMUNICATION 16 3
INFORMATION DESIGN AS THE PRESENTATION
ON PAGE OR SCREEN
Information design in the narrower meaning of the way the
information is presented on the page or screen is a part of
the larger information design process. In this sense, infor-
mation design encompasses layout, typography, color, re-
lationship between words and pictures, and so forth.
The two meanings of information design are intertwined.
Clear presentation on the page or screen is critical. However,
the presentation that works for users is not just a matter of
aesthetics. The best presentation for a specific communication
depends on the situation—on the answers to the planning
questions that the broader definition makes us think through.
Information design on the level of page or screen also de-
pends on doing a good job of other parts of the broader
process, such as selecting the right content and organizing so
users can find what they need quickly. Information design as
whole and as part must work together.
A BIT OF HISTORY
How did I (and others) come to use information design in
both the broad and narrow meanings? I can think of two
reasons:
䉬Many STC people come to information design from
a background in rhetoric and technical communica-
tion, which take the broad view, stressing users,
Fig. 1. A model of the information design process. This is a visual of information design in the broad sense of doing what is
necessary to develop information that works for users. The dotted arrows indicate that the process is iterative, not strictly linear. A
dotted arrow should also connect the Drafting and Testing box back to the box on Selecting Content/Organizing/Designing Pages or
Screens. Model © 1999, Janice C. Redish, based on versions of a similar model developed between 1978 and 1999 at the American
Institutes for Research and at Redish & Associates, Inc.
COMMENTARY
What Is Information Design?
Redish
164
Technical
COMMUNICATION •
Second Quarter 2000
content, organization, and writing, as well as presen-
tation.
䉬The U.S. federal government funded a broad-view
project and called it the Document Design Project.
For an excellent treatise on the first of these reasons,
read Karen Schriver’s Dynamics in document design
(1997). I elaborate a bit here on the second reason because
many readers of Technical communication, especially
those who have joined the field recently, may be unaware
of this history.
The Document Design Project
My own involvement in the field that I have on different
occasions called “document design,” “information design,”
“plain language,” and “technical communication” began in
the late 1970s. The National Institute of Education (NIE),
which was then part of the U.S. Department of Education,
funded a project to find out why most public documents
are difficult to use and to find out what could be done to
make them better. The group at NIE named the project they
were asking for the Document Design Project.
NIE was clearly not concerned only with the layout of
public documents. By “document design,” they meant the
entire process of developing the document. In fact, be-
cause they were primarily linguists and reading specialists,
they were most concerned with the content, organization,
and writing of the documents.
My colleagues and I at the American Institutes for
Research (AIR), a not-for-profit research firm in Washing-
ton, DC, wrote the winning proposal to conduct the Doc-
ument Design Project for NIE. We did that in collaboration
with Carnegie Mellon University and the New York infor-
mation design firm of Siegel & Gale.
The Document Design Center and
the Communications Design Center
A year into the project (1979), we at AIR expanded the
project into the Document Design Center, which I directed
through the 1980s. The project staff at Carnegie Mellon
University expanded their part of the project into the Com-
munications Design Center. We both used “Design” in our
Centers’ names in part to reflect the continuity of the
original project. Both Centers practiced information design
in both the broad and narrow meanings. That is, we fol-
lowed the model in Figure 1 on all projects, and we paid as
much attention to page or screen design as we did to
writing.
Karen Schriver was part of the Communications Design
Center (CDC), and the projects described in her book carry
on the dual meaning of information design that was a
hallmark of the CDC. When Susan Kleimann became di-
rector of the Document Design Center in 1993, she re-
named it the Information Design Center—still with the dual
meaning of both whole and part.
From 1979 to 1989, through its newsletter, Simply
stated, the Document Design Center reached about 18,000
people 10 times a year, espousing the process of document
design in the broad sense; and the process with its name
was picked up by many people who were and are part of
STC. Document design or information design in the nar-
rower sense of presentation on page or screen was always
a necessary but not sufficient aspect of the process that the
Document Design Center and the Communications Design
Center used in their work.
Plain language as another term for information
design—in the broad meaning as overall process
A side note (related to Beth Mazur’s article in this issue):
We also used the term “plain language” primarily in the
same broad meaning. As I have written elsewhere (1985,
1996, 1999), a document in plain language is one that
works for its users. To develop a document that works for
its users requires the entire process shown in Figure 1, not
just a few guidelines for sentences and words.
THE IMPORTANCE OF INFORMATION DESIGN
IN BOTH MEANINGS IN THE FUTURE
As technical communicators, we do all the parts of the
process that I show in Figure 1. We may specialize or call
on colleagues who specialize in helping us with aspects of
the process, such as user and task analysis, usability eval-
uations, copyediting, and proofreading. If we think of our-
selves as primarily “word” people, we may call on others to
collaborate with us on the “design” (here, design in the
more narrow meaning of page or screen layout, typogra-
phy, and so forth)—or vice versa, if we think of ourselves
as primarily “visual” people, we may rely more on col-
leagues to review our writing.
However, we are all going to need to understand both
information and design and how they relate to each other
even more in the future. Whichever way you have come to
technical communication, I urge you to spend time learn-
ing the aspects you feel least comfortable with now. At
least two critical trends in technical communication require
us to think even more about information design. They are
Information design in the narrower
meaning of the way the
information is presented on the
page or screen is a part of the
larger information design process.
COMMENTARY
What Is Information Design?
Redish
Second Quarter 2000
•
Technical
COMMUNICATION 16 5
䉬The Web, which requires us to make information
even more visual than in other media
䉬Single-sourcing, in which technical communicators
prepare information that can be reused in different
formats
Information design for the Web
The Web requires information design in the broad sense
of the entire process described in Figure 1. We must not
let excitement over technical possibilities or the super-
rapid pace of development eliminate the front end of the
process. To develop a successful Web site, you must first
consider the planning questions in the process, select
the relevant content, and organize it into an appropriate
hierarchy for ease of navigating quickly to the right
place.
The Web also requires information design in the nar-
rower sense of paying great attention to the mix of text and
pictures and to presentation on the screen. Technical com-
municators know that for information on a page to be
accessible, it must be chunked into small pieces, and the
different page elements (such as headings, instructions,
notes, screen shots) have to be clearly visible, separable,
and easily identified. That’s even more true on the screen
where the amount of space available is smaller, where
reading from the screen is slower and more difficult than
from paper, where people have come to expect less text
and more visuals. Learning to turn text into visual presen-
tations (lists, tables, maps, pictures, fragments) is one of the
most important skills for a technical communicator turned
Web designer.
Single-sourcing—planning
information for multiple uses
Single-sourcing means creating a database of pieces of
information (chunks of content) that can be used in differ-
ent situations. The mantra of single-sourcing is “Write once,
use many times.” The goals of single-sourcing are to save
time and money; to ensure consistency and accuracy; and
to allow technical communicators to spend more time on
aspects of developing information that have perhaps been
neglected, such as user and task analysis, content, and
evaluation.
Although developing Web pages brings writing and
page/screen design closer together, single-sourcing sepa-
rates them. The content resides in the database, sometimes
tagged with conditions that indicate that one version of the
content is for paper and another for online help, or that one
version is for Model 35 and another for Model 36, or that
one version is for novices and another for experts. The
formatting for different outputs (information design in the
narrower sense) is contained in document definitions. A
document definition indicates, for example, the font, size,
placement, and color of each level of heading for that
particular type of output (paper, online help file, PDF file,
Web page, and so forth).
Despite this separation of writing and page/screen
design, anyone planning on single-sourcing must pay close
attention to information design in both the broad and
narrow meanings. First, whether assembling a document
from pieces in a database or writing the document from
scratch, the technical communicator must start from the
beginning of the information design process (information
design in the broad sense as in Figure 1), understanding the
business goals, the users, the ways users will work with the
documents, and so on. Second, successful single-sourcing
requires highly structured documents in which the writing
style and the output formats have been carefully planned.
(Schriver [1997, pages 341–357] describes how to plan the
output format based on a detailed analysis of the types of
content in the document.) Technical communicators who
work in a single-sourcing system, even though they may
not determine the output format for their documents, need
to know what those formats are, and technical communi-
cators need to be involved in planning them.
T
C
REFERENCES
Redish, J. C. 1996. “Defining plain English.” Australian language
matters (July/August/September):3.
Redish, J. C. 1999. “Document and information design.” In
Encyclopedia of electrical and electronics engineering,J.
Webster, ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6, pp.
10 –24.
Redish, J. C. 1985. “The plain English movement.” In The English
language today: Public attitudes toward the English language,
S. Greenbaum, ed. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, pp. 125–
138.
Schriver, K. A. 1997. Dynamics in document design. New York,
NY: John Wiley & Sons.
JANICE C. (GINNY) REDISH is president of Redish &
Associates, Inc. in Bethesda, MD. She helps corporations and
government agencies solve problems in document design and
usability. She is co-author of A practical guide to usability test-
ing (2nd ed., 1999) and User and task analysis for interface
design. A fellow of STC, she is a member of the Washington,
DC chapter and the former assistant to the president of STC for
Academic and Research Programs.
COMMENTARY
What Is Information Design?
Redish
166
Technical
COMMUNICATION •
Second Quarter 2000
