Five Principles of Information Design
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Gaining an understanding and appreciation for information design sensitizes us to the need for clear structure and organization. These five information design principles will be helpful to keep in mind as you work through the process of defining the structure, content, and functionality of a website.
Architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour coined the principle, "It is all right to decorate construction, but never construct decoration."
It is important to separate in our minds the distinction between information design and visual design. These two disciplines certainly meet in the final product of a website, but they are clearly distinct in the design process. Before visual design can be addressed, the right questions have to be asked, problems must be defined, and overall planning must be completed. Through these processes the information designer builds a deeper level of understanding about how a site and its various functions fit together. Finally, once the construction of a site is complete, the visual designer can add decoration and clarity to the structure. Good visual design will further refine the clarity of the information. There will be problems however, if the visual design process preempts the planning process.
Many web projects end up derailing when they move too quickly into visual design. If you find yourself choosing a color palette for a site before you have fully planned out its structure, content, and functionality, you are failing to properly complete the information design process. As a result you will usually end up constructing decoration rather than decorating construction. Visual design will never do the job of clarifying information if the overall information design has not preceded it.
Apple's round mouse was a neat idea conceptually, but an extremely bad idea in terms of functionality.
Consider Apple's ill conceived "hockey puck" mouse that came standard with their iMac computers. The mouse was redesigned as a circle rather than an oblong shape. This failed to consider the interaction of the user who cannot tell how the mouse is oriented in their hand without feeling around for the button. A person using the mouse would move the mouse left and the cursor would go up because they could not tell that the mouse was facing the wrong way. Here Apple constructed a decoration rather than decorating an existing (and superior) form. Visual design can add clarity to a designed structure, but it should never dictate what that structure should be.
Edward Tufte in his classic book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, introduces his principle of erasing "non-data ink." To visually display data (in his case a graph) Tufte shows how, by erasing all lines, points, etc. which do not directly serve to communicate the data, the resulting graph will communicate the information more directly. Erasing non-descriptive ink also draws out relationships within data that would otherwise be missed. This simple principle applied to web-based information will help to cut through the clutter and confusion that typifies many websites. As is most often the case, more can usually be communicated with less.
Having erased the bounding box, the hash marks, and the bars where the hash marks are indicated, Tufte shows how less ink clarifies the relationship of each bar to the others.
Richard Saul Wurman qualifies the principle of simplification (erasing) as just one aspect of the true goal of the information designer, that is, clarification. He writes, "The fundamental task of the information architect is to make information understandable. My passion has always been making the complex clear, clarifying, rather than simplifying it. The simplification movement is just another minimalist fashion. The goal is to clarify - make it easy to understand."
Clarification is the ultimate goal for the information designer. Simplification is a good place to start. Stripping away clutter helps to reveal the essence of information. It may be necessary to refine, and add back some of the information that initially gets stripped out, but everything should ultimately add clarity. Anything that does not add clarity should most often be removed.
Planning is the most critical part of the design process, and the most important part of the planning process is asking the right questions. Grayscreen is designed to facilitate the planning process. It enables the client and development team to ask the right questions and design the site appropriately in the beginning.
One of the primary skill sets of the information designer is the ability to ask the right questions. The right questions are rarely the first questions. The first questions are like darts thrown in the dark, they don't often hit the target, but they can tell you where the target isn't. Through asking general questions and listening carefully to the answers, an information designer will help find the target. As the target comes into focus, new and better questions can be asked. These refined questions clarify the overall priorities for a project.
Thoroughly defining a project can be difficult and time consuming. It can be tempting to skip over or superficially work through this process. The information designer needs to make sure that all problems are fully defined so that a design solution can be developed that will provide the right answers to the right questions. To find the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.
At some point in the development process it is helpful to do usability testing. Doing good usability testing can be quite tricky because of the real way that people perceive and experience things.
Harry Beckwith in his insightful books, Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch, relates a few stories of how people really behave as opposed to how we think they behave.
He reminds us of the "Folger's Crystals" commercials, where they secretly replace the house coffee at some ritzy restaurant with Folger's. Of course, the unsuspecting customer raves about the coffee only to find out that it's Folger's. Did Folger's really taste as good, or will almost any coffee taste good when consumed in the context of such an overwhelmingly posh environment?
These two examples demonstrate how the responses we get from focus groups, sample surveys, and user testing can be misleading. More often than not, these methods return the results we expect to get.
We have found that the best results for usability testing (as well as the fastest and least expensive) come from applying the 80% - 20% rule*. That is, 80% of good design will come from an inclusive process that enables a range of people familiar with the needs of a site to work through the organization of its structure, content, and functionality. The remaining 20% of "testing" can be accomplished through having an outside group provide a basic site review, checking for typos, broken links, etc.
It's important that these "testers" not know what they are really testing. As soon as you tell someone to "test the user interface," they will immediately enter a critical frame of mind where they must find problems, or they will be thought to lack insight. By having someone check for typos or broken links, they will not only provide a useful service, but they will also experience any real interface problems as they work through the site. By asking general questions about their experience, you will get much better feedback. If such a person reports interface or organizational problems they are likely to be real issues.
"To design is to plan, to order, to relate, and to control. In short, it opposes all means of disorder and accident" - Emil Roder, Typography
Design is the opposite of accident. Design is often thought of as the result of an artist's choices of color, layout, and type. While this is certainly a part of the graphic design process, the information design process is different. Design can also be thought of as a deliberate process of ordering. This is the kind of design an information designer practices. The tools of the information designer are not necessarily fonts and colors, but thought and analysis. In this respect, information design is akin to architecture or engineering more so than graphic design.
The pace of technology and the demands of the marketplace often fight against the design process. Sometimes there is no way to slow things down. Design opposes accident, but when things move too fast, accidents are bound to happen. The design process requires time to work through. Fortunately, the grayscreen process facilitates good planning and definition, while moving the project forward rapidly.
Principle One:
DON'T CONSTRUCT DECORATION
DON'T CONSTRUCT DECORATION
Architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour coined the principle, "It is all right to decorate construction, but never construct decoration."
Visual design vs. information design
It is important to separate in our minds the distinction between information design and visual design. These two disciplines certainly meet in the final product of a website, but they are clearly distinct in the design process. Before visual design can be addressed, the right questions have to be asked, problems must be defined, and overall planning must be completed. Through these processes the information designer builds a deeper level of understanding about how a site and its various functions fit together. Finally, once the construction of a site is complete, the visual designer can add decoration and clarity to the structure. Good visual design will further refine the clarity of the information. There will be problems however, if the visual design process preempts the planning process.
Many web projects end up derailing when they move too quickly into visual design. If you find yourself choosing a color palette for a site before you have fully planned out its structure, content, and functionality, you are failing to properly complete the information design process. As a result you will usually end up constructing decoration rather than decorating construction. Visual design will never do the job of clarifying information if the overall information design has not preceded it.
Apple's round mouse was a neat idea conceptually, but an extremely bad idea in terms of functionality.
Apple's ill-conceived "hockey-puck" mouse
Consider Apple's ill conceived "hockey puck" mouse that came standard with their iMac computers. The mouse was redesigned as a circle rather than an oblong shape. This failed to consider the interaction of the user who cannot tell how the mouse is oriented in their hand without feeling around for the button. A person using the mouse would move the mouse left and the cursor would go up because they could not tell that the mouse was facing the wrong way. Here Apple constructed a decoration rather than decorating an existing (and superior) form. Visual design can add clarity to a designed structure, but it should never dictate what that structure should be.
Principle Two:
ERASE
ERASE
Erase non-data pixels
Edward Tufte in his classic book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, introduces his principle of erasing "non-data ink." To visually display data (in his case a graph) Tufte shows how, by erasing all lines, points, etc. which do not directly serve to communicate the data, the resulting graph will communicate the information more directly. Erasing non-descriptive ink also draws out relationships within data that would otherwise be missed. This simple principle applied to web-based information will help to cut through the clutter and confusion that typifies many websites. As is most often the case, more can usually be communicated with less.
Having erased the bounding box, the hash marks, and the bars where the hash marks are indicated, Tufte shows how less ink clarifies the relationship of each bar to the others.
Simplify vs. clarify
Richard Saul Wurman qualifies the principle of simplification (erasing) as just one aspect of the true goal of the information designer, that is, clarification. He writes, "The fundamental task of the information architect is to make information understandable. My passion has always been making the complex clear, clarifying, rather than simplifying it. The simplification movement is just another minimalist fashion. The goal is to clarify - make it easy to understand."
Clarification is the ultimate goal for the information designer. Simplification is a good place to start. Stripping away clutter helps to reveal the essence of information. It may be necessary to refine, and add back some of the information that initially gets stripped out, but everything should ultimately add clarity. Anything that does not add clarity should most often be removed.
Principle Three:
GOOD QUESTIONS
GOOD QUESTIONS
Planning essential
Planning is the most critical part of the design process, and the most important part of the planning process is asking the right questions. Grayscreen is designed to facilitate the planning process. It enables the client and development team to ask the right questions and design the site appropriately in the beginning.
Finding the right questions
One of the primary skill sets of the information designer is the ability to ask the right questions. The right questions are rarely the first questions. The first questions are like darts thrown in the dark, they don't often hit the target, but they can tell you where the target isn't. Through asking general questions and listening carefully to the answers, an information designer will help find the target. As the target comes into focus, new and better questions can be asked. These refined questions clarify the overall priorities for a project.
Taking the necessary time
Thoroughly defining a project can be difficult and time consuming. It can be tempting to skip over or superficially work through this process. The information designer needs to make sure that all problems are fully defined so that a design solution can be developed that will provide the right answers to the right questions. To find the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.
Principle Four:
THE FALLACY OF "PROFESSIONAL" TESTING
THE FALLACY OF "PROFESSIONAL" TESTING
At some point in the development process it is helpful to do usability testing. Doing good usability testing can be quite tricky because of the real way that people perceive and experience things.
Beckwith's examples
Harry Beckwith in his insightful books, Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch, relates a few stories of how people really behave as opposed to how we think they behave.
He reminds us of the "Folger's Crystals" commercials, where they secretly replace the house coffee at some ritzy restaurant with Folger's. Of course, the unsuspecting customer raves about the coffee only to find out that it's Folger's. Did Folger's really taste as good, or will almost any coffee taste good when consumed in the context of such an overwhelmingly posh environment?
*The 80% - 20% rule is based on the principle that 37.45% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Another of his examples is the "McLowCal" burger. McDonald's spent a lot of time surveying consumers to ask if they would purchase a low cal alternative to the Big Mac. Of course everyone would like to think that they would make the healthy choice, and implied this in the results. However, once on the market, the product failed miserably. Although we would all like to think that we would choose a healthy burger when provided with the option, in reality we choose the tasty burger. The truth is, we think we behave differently than we actually do. These two examples demonstrate how the responses we get from focus groups, sample surveys, and user testing can be misleading. More often than not, these methods return the results we expect to get.
Utilize the experience and insight of many
We have found that the best results for usability testing (as well as the fastest and least expensive) come from applying the 80% - 20% rule*. That is, 80% of good design will come from an inclusive process that enables a range of people familiar with the needs of a site to work through the organization of its structure, content, and functionality. The remaining 20% of "testing" can be accomplished through having an outside group provide a basic site review, checking for typos, broken links, etc.
It's important that these "testers" not know what they are really testing. As soon as you tell someone to "test the user interface," they will immediately enter a critical frame of mind where they must find problems, or they will be thought to lack insight. By having someone check for typos or broken links, they will not only provide a useful service, but they will also experience any real interface problems as they work through the site. By asking general questions about their experience, you will get much better feedback. If such a person reports interface or organizational problems they are likely to be real issues.
Principle Five:
DESIGN
DESIGN
"To design is to plan, to order, to relate, and to control. In short, it opposes all means of disorder and accident" - Emil Roder, Typography
The opposite of accident
Design is the opposite of accident. Design is often thought of as the result of an artist's choices of color, layout, and type. While this is certainly a part of the graphic design process, the information design process is different. Design can also be thought of as a deliberate process of ordering. This is the kind of design an information designer practices. The tools of the information designer are not necessarily fonts and colors, but thought and analysis. In this respect, information design is akin to architecture or engineering more so than graphic design.
Pressures that work against good design
The pace of technology and the demands of the marketplace often fight against the design process. Sometimes there is no way to slow things down. Design opposes accident, but when things move too fast, accidents are bound to happen. The design process requires time to work through. Fortunately, the grayscreen process facilitates good planning and definition, while moving the project forward rapidly.
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