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Preface

If you’ve ever been lost in a parking structure, searching in vain for your car, then you know the power of design. If you’ve ever struggled to understand a contract, then you know the power of design. If you’ve ever cast your vote for one candidate only to find it tallied to another, then you know the power of design. Design can confuse. Design can mislead. Design can also change the course of history.

MORE THAN A TOOL TO TEMPT THE EYE

Design can clarify and simplify. It can inspire loyalty, sell millions, or save lives. The power of design lies in its nuance; intelligently planned and skillfully achieved, it is more than a tool to tempt the eye. It’s the difference between considered and purchased, annoyed and inspired, lost and found.

AN AMAZING TIME TO BE A DESIGNER

The importance of design is more acknowledged than ever, even in the general press. However, a good deal of this focus has been on product design or data visualization. What may be less celebrated are the thousands of ways we depend on design to help us sort through complicated information and complex choices. Whether the information is online, printed, environmental, or experiential, the key is to craft the experience for the audience and look for ways in which design can cut through the clutter to the essence of an idea.

Over the years, clients have typically turned to designers to solve problems and devise smart design and communications solutions. Today’s world of information overload means that designers are frequently asked to distill and simplify massive quantities of information. In terms of the designer’s evolving role, expertise in information design has become a key factor in providing value to clients and collaborators.

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

Many graphic designers are not specifically trained how to approach the design of information-intensive projects or think of design from a user-centric approach. Both of these tasks can seem challenging, even daunting. Our hope is that this book will make both the idea and the practice of information design appealing and approachable.

THIS BOOK:

Leads you through the mindset and kind of thinking that support good information design
Gives you an overview of the types of processes and tools you can use to create effective information design
Shows real-world examples of successful projects
Presents interviews with some of the premier practitioners working in the field today

A USER-CENTRIC MINDSET

An information designer who’s in the zone is likely to have the following traits:

A passion for asking questions
A keen eye for detail
Respect for the end-user’s time and needs
The ability to see the forest and the trees
A sensitivity to everyday annoyances
The empathy to imagine what others feel
The ability to observe and participate at the same time
A sense of humor—when isn’t this a useful trait?

The following anecdotes will give you a sense for how to think like an information designer. These are real-world stories from the trenches, detailing the various ways user experiences could be improved if seen with a user-centric design mindset. Once you have the user-centric mindset, you’ll never see the world the same way again.

GUERILLA PUBLIC SERVICE

Due to the lack of adequate signage at the busy junction of the 110 and Interstate 5 freeways near downtown Los Angeles, motorists were constantly missing their interchange and getting lost. Artist Richard Ankrom got fed up and created completely realistic freeway and directional signage to correct the problem. Ankrom’s precisely reproduced guide signs were so realistic that the California Department of Transportation assumed it was an inside job until the artist revealed the stunt nine months later in a news article.

CURSING IN THE AISLES

“If you visit an office supply store, you’re likely to find customers agonizing over the sea of confusing items in the ink cartridge aisle. An information design nightmare, ink packaging is often designed with the same template. Many inks serve multiple printers. You have to scan assorted, hard-to-pinpoint printer numbers on the same small box. Is that image of the parrot on the package relevant, part of an image coding system? Next time the ink runs out, you too will be cursing in the ink aisles. And don’t get me started about trying to find the right package online!” —Ann E.

YOUR CAR IS WAITING. SOMEWHERE.

“Ever lose your car in a parking deck? The problem of multistory parking structures is an issue worldwide. Very few parking structures create vista icons or prompts to help those of us with short memories and stressed circumstances remember where we parked. Parking structures are clearly created by engineers for car storage purposes and not for car users who wish to continue a relationship with their vehicle.” —Tania K.

I’M SORRY, CAN YOU REPEAT THAT?

“We were standing in a long customs line that was taking forever and I came to realize that it was because the customs agent (decked out in a giant cowboy hat and gold collar medallions) was giving directions (the identical directions, we might add) to each person in line as to how to get to their gate. And a good thing too, because I’ve never seen such bad/inadequate signage in an airport. That delay prevented our luggage from getting on the flight, but that’s another story.” —Barbara C.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

“Translation: Ignore the customer at all costs. All of my health insurance claims were being denied. Twenty-one calls later (not including the multiple automated phone system runarounds), I had a new excuse from each representative: computer error, misspelled name, incorrect ID number, wrong zip code, no record of me as a client. No rep would give a name, so there was zero accountability. I asked to speak to a supervisor. The person I spoke to pretended to be a supervisor and gave a false name. I wrote a letter and sent it to several company locations and copied the state attorney general’s office. I filed thirty written appeals. Eventually the claims were just paid. No one ever explained the problem.” —Diane V.

AUTOMATIC WASTEFULNESS

“Automatic public restroom functionality: Wave of the future? Key to cleanliness? Sensors need to be carefully placed and calibrated, though, to ensure a good user experience. How much water is wasted by all those overly sensitive automatic systems that flush the toilet three times before you exit the stall? (Of course, unflushed toilets aren’t desirable either.) How about when you soap up your hands with an automatic soap dispenser, but the automatic water faucet sensor pretends you’re not there? Or when the automatic paper towel dispenser sensor is placed dangerously close to the sink, so that every time you lean over to wash your hands, you unintentionally release wasteful reams of paper?” —Leslie L.

WHERE’S THE @#!* ARTICLE?

“The information design in magazines often drives me nuts. A cover treatment sometimes promotes a juicy article topic that’s nearly impossible to find inside the magazine. You flip through the pages like mad and you still can’t find it. Finally you scour the table of contents. You think you’ve found the article buried somewhere in the magazine, but it has a completely different title. And it’s really more of a blurb than a full-blown article. And sometimes the topic is only marginally related to the cover promotion. The information design equivalent of bait and switch!” —Jill V.

ASSEMBLY AND LIFT-OFF?

“A couple of years ago I decided to make margaritas, so I bought a blender and then tried to put it together. It came with a wordless diagram with vague pictures of parts that joined together. The end result is that the margaritas went flying as the force of the motor blew apart the various parts of the blender that I clearly hadn’t put together properly. That’s when I learned to love beer.” —Julie Z.

WHAT FLOOR, PLEASE?

“I’m constantly annoyed by the total lack of standards around information design for elevators and floor naming in the U.S. It would be so great if someone would think about making the signs outside the elevator match the buttons inside. In Germany, for instance, every elevator in every building is the same. Here, they sometimes indicate ground floor with a G (is that for ‘ground’ or ‘garage’?). Floor one is sometimes the ground floor and sometimes the second story up. P? Is that for ‘plaza’ or ‘parking’? It’s particularly confusing when the building has entrances at different grades and the parking garage is partly above and partly below grade.” —Chris C.

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