Design of information can be print and/or electronic documents for both presentations and Web sites. No matter which form of design you use, there are many guidelines to follow. In this chapter Burnett discusses those different principles used in PowerPoint presentations, technical and scientific posters, and Web sites.
Information Design is the way in which you organize and present information to increase and audience's comprehension.
Document Design is a part of information design.
- There are five categories of elements which are important in designing print documents as well as Web pages.
- Textual elements - letters, numbers, and symbols
- Spatial elements - spaces between elements
- Graphic elements - punctuation marks, geometric forms, and visual images
- Color and textural elements - the hue, brightness/value/luminescence
- Dynamic elements - motion that is implied in a print document
In this chapter, Burnett discusses how reading electronic documents is about 25% slower than reading from paper. Due to this, many people do not like to read long chunks of text on the computer. A way to make text easier and more appealing to read on the computer is by using design principles in your document with chunking and labeling.
Chunking information involves logical topical relationships and the audience need for the information.
One of the most efficient ways to inform your audience about the way you've chunked information is in a table of contents. One way to do that on a Web page is to make bulleted lists and make each bullet into a separate link.
Using White Space to Chunk Information
White space is the part of any page or screen that is blank, without print or visuals.
White space is used for margins, between lines within a paragraph, between paragraphs and sections of a document, and around visuals.
Headings to Label Chunked Information
Headings and subheadings label the information and identify the importance of the information. They establish the subject of a section and give readers a chance to take a break while trying to read the documents.
There are two practices that will help you to produce a more effective document
- Selection of appropriate grids
- The easiest way to design a page or document is to see the page/screen as a grid. A grid is columns and rows that help you organize the text and visual chunks. There are one-column, two-column, and three-column grids. - Placement of visuals near related text
- Placing visuals near the related text is going to allow the reader to not have to constantly turn back and forth between pages that they are reading and the visuals.
Potential problems that distract readers
- Chartjunk - unnecessary graphics that do not help people understand the information.
- Tombstoning - aligning heading so that readers mistakenly chunk the text when they look at the page.
- Heading placement - leaving too few lines after a heading or subheading at the top or bottom of a column or page.
- Widows and orphans - Widows are leftover words hanging awkwardly as the last line of a paragraph. Orphans are when a column or page break occurs in a paragraph after the first line of the paragraph.
Typefaces (font)
Typeface affects the readers' attitudes and reactions to a document, as well as their ability to access, comprehend, and use information quickly and easily. You can choose different fonts depending on what kind of document or doing or what information you are giving to your readers.
There are four basic characteristics about typefaces:
- Serif or sans serif - Serifs are tiny fine lines usually at the top or bottom of letters. Sans serif typefaces are simpler, the letters don't have as many distinguishing features so they have a neat and appealing appearance.
- Typeface variations - Readers will not want to read your document if the font is difficult to read.
- Type size - You do not want to use a type that is too small so that the readers cannot read it and you also do not want to use a font that is too large because it will make it seem elementary.
- Style choices - Different styles include capitalization, small caps, boldface, and italics. Using all caps should be limited to headings only. Boldface gives a visual emphasis on certain words or phrases.
Visual devices
These devices include numbered and bulleted lists, underlining, boxes, shading, and colors. If you overuse these, their impact will not be as strong. Too many will make a page or document look cluttered.
Numbered lists are used mainly used to show sequence, priority, or total number of items.
Bulleted lists are used when all of the items in the list are equivalent.
Color is one of the strongest and most appealing devices. Color-coded documents or pages are more interesting to look at and provide more clarity.
14 comments:
Chapter 11 was on Designing Information and I thought that they did a good job describing what to do and what not to do when designing information. One thing that stuck out to me was using too many spaces after or before a heading becuase I can think of times when I have seen this in text and wasn't sure what part of the document it was grouped with. The main idea is to make everything easy to undestand and easy to read. Another thing that was brought up was watching the way you indent paragraphs so the audience isn't confused where the information is comming from. I think that this chapter is very good at describing what needs to be done and what needs to be avoided when designing information.
The text in the summary for chapter 11 gives a person an over all feel of what is needed when designing information pages. One of the biggest problems I have had is staying focused. Certain technical documents are almost impossible to stay interested for more than a few pages. With the help of this chapter summary, I have gained an understanding of what one can do when writing a document. I know just like any other person who has written a document, you want readers to finish it and not just skim through and miss the point. If you were writing so a person would just get part of the information then you would be creating a summary page and not a technical document
I think this chapter is very useful because we are always or will be writing technical documents at work, school or even for personal communication with our friends. It is so important to design the information in such a way that the audiences will read the information with ease. I do agree that electronic documents are slower than paper based. I always print electronic documents. Some useful strategies are discussed when designing information.
I find that very few people take into account the information in this chapter. The use of bold, italic, underlining, coloration, and bullets/numbering are either used ineffectively or not at all. I personally find these simple formatting changes to dramatically better my understanding of the information contained.
I think that this chapter was very useful, and the group did a good job or organizing it. As students who will soon be entering the work force it is good to have and understanding of how information should be organized and designed. I also think that paper based documents are more convenient for me anyways because I like to circle, highlight and make notes in margins when I am reading an informational document.
this is a very informative chapter, and i think that alot of people should read it because it could help out alot of people with putting documents together correctly. i know when i am putting together important documents i am never really sure of the format that i am supposed to be useing. especially if it involves bold, italics, or numbers. when i start my career i know that i am going to be responsible for produceing proffessional documents and it will be nice to know how to do them correctly.
Design of information can be found in various forms. Loosbrock and kolquist has defined design of information as print or electronic documents. Burnett discusses those different principles used in PowerPoint presentations, technical and scientific posters, and Web sites. A design should be attractive, even to a neutral audience. Chunking out the information is way better and attractive. Use of audio and visual files, links in a design adds up the persuasion in design.
Designing Information is key factor to make document easy to read.The information should be well manage with full of things which design can give. We see in the presentation, all have our own design and make different style to present. And also we write our paper, we use different style to make it easy to read and focus on main point. As, we use bold for our topic and have some picture to make understand.Therefore, it helps to maintain the follow of audience attraction.
The chapter summary gives a good knowledge about designing information. Writing an effective technical reports not only needs information but also a proper designing of information to grab the attention. Assembling bunch of information in a document doesn’t interest much of the audiences, that’s the reason designing is important. I also agree that even the simple formatting of the fonts like bold, italics, and underline a lot difference in the technical reports. I think designing makes the presentation attractive and interesting.
This was a very interesting chapter. I never knew so much thought went into putting text on a web page. I have never used the terms widow, orphans, sans serifs etc... in this manner. I do agree that it is often more confusing and frustrating to read text off of a computer screen. Colors, text sizing and other factors can increase one's attention span. I also agree that web pages that utilize information tabs can make it easier to jump from one topic to another. This is one of the few benefits of reading text on computers. I still prefer to have the text on paper in front of me though.
I think this is an interesting topic because it seems there wouldnt be that much to talk about but there really are so many things that go in to design that don't cross your mind until you get to that point in your work. An affective design can increase the usability of the work and also its attractivness to the eye.
When designing a document it is a good Idea to keep how easy it is going to be to read. You should also have to keep in mind reading level and the wordiness of the document that you are writing. When I write a document I take what the class is in to consideration also what kind of person the teacher is so when they read it they will understand what I am saying and understand the content a little bit better. This is a very good chapter summery. It was really easy to read and it was easy to understand.
i think this chapter was very useful since everyone has to put together some sort of important documents in their lifetime. if you have all your spacings correct and all the paragraphs indented, you can have a very good looking document. using italics, bold, and bullets/numbering let certain parts of your paper stand out to the reader. i think if more people used these tools, they would not have messy looking papers.
Very well written summary. I am really impressed with Burnett in this particular chapter. I never gave a lot of thought as to how something is laid out but she makes some very good points in this chapter. She also makes a lot of sense.
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