How to design information?
Designing information is not a skill that comes easily to professionals. Information that is in the form of data, text and images. Most professionals are used to using language to communicate their facts, findings, and information.
But language is constrained by words. Words being the primary tool of communication for language. (Ref: Noam Choksy) is what most individuals learn as the primary language of communication. But according to philosophers, language is not an ideal form of communication of THOUGHT.
We look at 5 principles of Information design and how they aid us in designing information.
1. Communicating Thought : Insights and perspectives need the ability to visualize. Visualization needs design. Designing your text, data, images in a story. In essence, you want professionals to understand & learn by viewing..’ The order is critical.’- •At the very heart of information design is DEDUCTION. •The ability to deduce facts, data, images, visuals into a coherent story. Those are the supporting actors. – This is the depth you wish to go to.. Your range is the story you want to tell.
The goal and objective of the project has to be larger than what your information visually looks..
For example- For one presentation I did to a government organization on How different stakeholders can enable sustainability, I focused on the stakeholders and how using the framework, we figured a role for each. I limited the data on sustainability and presented and showed a lot more of what it meant for policy holders,brands and consumers.
For another report, the main idea being communicated was how design managers must become Customer Artists and design for the Customer. I focussed on the design aspect as per understanding of the consumer. And then used some brand examples to show how that impacts the brand and sales. I did not get into consumer insights/research of each brand but how designing keeping in mind product consumption/usage led to the brand’s success.
THE KEY THOUGHT HERE IS PROGRESSION OF NEEDS. That is the main Idea being communicated.
THE VISUAL AIDS THE STORY HERE. Imagine this without the graphic,
2. Facts & findings : These are mostly recorded and then reported.
That is what most professionals are familiar with. It is Insights, Wisdom, Application that is most visionary in nature that needs to be designed. – That’s the thought that is difficult to communicate.
Whats the story – What do you want to HERO? Make sure you include only those data points. if you merely want to communicate what you are saying then use Less of Insights/perspective Allows individual thought. Different conclusions - Then simple pie.bar charts are the best. Allow for highest pre-attentive features.
The worst is putting up a data and then highlight the data. Thats should be completely avoided.
If you want the audience to explore the data with you, then yes present one dimensional data,
One dimension data is recording, two is reporting.
Putting a third or a context is application.
3. Knowing the intended outcome is important. What you set out to achieve is an important task. Most information deals with decision-making. To enable professionals to make decisions. Understand the task at hand, maybe a visualization is not required. Who is involved with the data, the problem, and the goals? What can they say about the problem to help design an effective visualization? Who will view the final visualization, and what sorts of things do we expect them to learn from it? What domain knowledge do they bring to the table? What answers would they find satisfying?
How does the understanding of data, tasks, and stakeholders come together? What representations of this data will fulfill the tasks for the users.
FROM NOISE TO WISDOM.
Each stage has its tools, processes and importance. We take data from record to wisdom and from noise to conclusion.
4. Format & structure: While you could be presenting information in mainly 3 forms- verbal, written and video, the framework for it will remain the same. The principles behind it remain the same. Designing the length of what you want to say is very important. Decide the story and the thought first and then decide which format suits the best.
Would you design for the format or first observe what you have to say? Much like make the bag bigger or clothes lesser?
Decide your Thought and theme first. Now try and shape it to the format.
Dont think of a 100 page report to have to be 100 pages. A one hour talk has to be stretched.
Sometime the thought gets over in much less time than that. Focus on the thought. .
5 Balancing elements. Just like not every line has to be italic, not every piece of information needs to be visualized. A particular pain point is numbers. In value form or in number form or what?.
The tactical – small things . Data- Ink ratio : How much is too much of text? How much data is too much? Many ways of looking at the same data.
We use graphs to show data more easily, to make it simpler to conclude. But then that must be the RULE to make a graph out of any data- tabular. What makes it easy to explore the data?
This pre-attentive detection feature—the instant sorting of differences and similarities—is one of the most powerful weapons in the designer’s arsenal.