What is Information Design?

In my humble opinion Information Design is really a simple concept to get around but a very large issue to implement in reality. The basic premise is how do you library any context based store of information and like a library how do you make the experience user friendly? When you think about it there is not much more to it than that. Context is probably the single most important aspect as it is going to set up boundaries, which may become vague as one heads towards them, but for each context the pool of information that pertains to it can be libraried in various ways, and it is these various ways that go toward user friendliness and how one decides they want the pool of information to come at themselves.

Jacobson in Information Design, as I start this course, appears to be about to state it is something more than what I have described above, as he has indicated input from several sources in his opening preface and chapter 1, and is going to have each take their turn at expounding to us what ID is from those respective authorial positions. Fine, I'm up for that, the more input the better my context for understanding what ID is supposed to be from the point of view of this class.

But let me explain what I have said in my first paragraph and using some of Jacobson's examples toward my own explanation of ID to you. Right off he cites the Eames' and their exhibit at the New York World's Fair. I remember that, I was there. And in years since I can remember thinking I'd love to see a timeline that took in and explained ALL of world history for each and every country. That has since been done in abbreviated, abridged ways. The question came to my mind though when I was much younger and realized the United States has a short history compared to the rest of the world. Yet for all our technological invention and innovation, we have done so in a relatively short period of time compared to the rest of the world, and wouldn't it be wonderful to see a timeline that showed the beginnings of Human culture, to show the development of navaigation of each world culture and race cross referenced, and then the convergence of the trade routes and the devlopments that came from such interaction cross referenced, and have it all parade along a cross referenced timeline right up until the present? And along with such a timeline would also exist other cross referenced compositions that would allow you to have in depth viewing at any point along the timeline. So you could click on an icon of Marco Polo, and have open an interactive library of how boats were made by the Norse and by the Chinese, and by the Peruvians, and by the Polynesians, and when. And then you could choose theoretical investigation and find yourself in the midst of the Woodshole Oceanographic Institute and their knowledge base of ship design and maritime navigation.

But you could also reverse that navigation into such a knowledge pursuit. You could start at Woodshole, and then choose to know how Marco Polo decided what kind of ship he wanted, and then how that related to ship designs for diferent peoples, and then find yourself back at the Eames' based timeline of all world history.

Of you could start from a sideways tangent. With the song sung by Popeye the sailor, "blow me down matey, way hey, blow the man down", and go from that song to anywhere in any of the above layout. And even further to NASA and how they plan to navigate outer space.

So given any point of view that you want to start from, or in other words, any given context you want to start from, knowing what you want to know, you can choose any course, whether it is context based, timeline chronologically based, culturally based in art or song, theoretically based in vector based coefficents along a curve of the hull of a ship, or whimsically from simply choosing a cool looking picture of Marco Polo as he set off his first chain of chinese made fireworks and working your way out from there, you would in fact have the choice and opportunity to do so.

If you buy into that premise then the challenge is obvious, how do you get there from here? How do you create the user interface to present itself to do that for you?

Then lift that set of problem solving techniques and place it into any context a human needs to have exist. For example, make it possible to enter any building and go find where the third floor emergency firehose is, or perhaps the fusebox, or perhaps the controller for the burnt out neon light on the building because you want to leave a message for building mainteneance that they have a burned out bulb. Or perhaps each emergency exit. Or rooms that are smaller than others if you are claustrophobic. Or the room that has to do with the business that you entered the building to do business with to begin with. And is the person you want to do business with even there to begin with? Or perhaps you want to know about the buidling design itself, and then you go find out about the Roman Parthenon and the Roman Arch, Doric columns and clerestory windows.

Imagine if your parents were so user friendly. You wouldn't even have to bother them for most situations, you'd know on any given night or day that the household budget wouldn't allow for you to even ask for the car, so you'd skip asking the question which might stress them out and bring a poor and emotion laden response from them. In the same thinking, biorythm awareness systems might alert you that Mom and Dad are in the mood to play and listen to music and the whole house could turn into a music concert five minutes later with Mom and Dad dancing in goofy ways and brother and sister also dancing in goofy ways but everyone okay with the event of music at that moment because everyones' biorhythms were in sync.

Or it may be that music is in order but M+D want to listen to some sappy country tune, and B+S want to go bang heads and ruin some foam core or sheetrock walls. Why not?

The point is that contextually being able to choose how information comes to you, choosing the how and why and when you want to learn and take in information stands the best chance of not only enlightening you in ways you couldn't possibly imagine, but also for holding your attention. And if the design of such an interface is well done your attention might well be indefinite.

I like to tell the story of how after I started playing video games and what happened on the way to getting to Need For Speed. I have played video games from the start, from text based Star Trek in the 70s on first generation 16kb dumb terminal PCs of that time to Pong, Space Invaders, Pac Man, Mario, Donkey Kong, and then the Mech Warrior games. When I got to the Mech Warrior games things changed, I had one weekend when I came in from work, sat down at 7pm on that Friday, and didn't get up until 7am Sunday. I had played for 36 hours straight.

Some call that addiction. Except that I realized what had happened and promptly removed Mech Warrior from that PC and told myself I'd wait until I could afford a seperate PC to put it and other games on so I could keep work separated from my playtime.

But what if I narrow that scope a little? What if work was in fact play? We see images of the Google corporate offices with the engineers there skateboarding among their desks, and engaging in other amusement in order to take a timeout from their work.

Merge it together. We almost can now with such bio-interactivity like the Kinect and other such interactivity. What if for you the ultimate plaything was the hull design of a sea going ship? Or the hull design of a space going ship? That the better your design was you were instantly rewarded in the same fashion as a Halo grunt is or a WOW mage is?

And what if as you went along that playline you received academic credit for it? So if you make a break through hull design worthy of a Carnival Cruise line ship you suddenly earned your PhD?

'Sound outlandish?

Or a worthy expenditure of your playtime and attention span to learn about something so well you become the best at it?

Have you ever seen a TV cable system in a locale where they broadcast math class? Or an english class?

Can you see the convergence of what can happen with great information design?

This is where I am coming from with respect to what great information design is.

reference:
Jacobson, Robert. (2000). Information design. Cambridge: MIT press.