Summary
People cannot be called designers just by making something look good without any purpose or meaning in their design. Current designers are trained to approach the information design structure. Effective design are needed to make life easier. In the world where information is one of the key to be successful, our world if overloaded with information. More and more companies and businesses turn to designer eventually turn to designer to simplify the information, especially in advertising or an announcement, to lead people and leave them with no confusion.

Information design is a new subject in our industry. However, as our world develop and modernized, this new subject will be more needed than ever. The subject has turn from a specialist perspective to be a generalist perspective. The more complex an information is, the more a user-centric mindset is required for the necessary design.

“Effective communication is the very essence of information design”

I think the quote itself is the main point of what we are learning in this class. How we get there is the main problem for effective communication. People process the information that they receive in many different ways. Dictatorial linear design or maybe even just plain text instruction (usually for traditional maps instruction) have both their advantages and disadvantages. It is depend on the subject that we are talking about. However, one thing for sure is that people need the attraction of the information that they read, so that they would actually spend time to actually get what the designers intended them to acknowledged. To be a good information designer, one need to be a content-focused and have user centric mind. Content-focused basically mean that you know the final goal of what you are doing, and deliver that goal to the intended audiences. User-centric means that as a designer we need to think like the users and not like the engineers. Keep in mind that the end users are the people who needed the information.


Anecdotes

1. The ais building with its very confusing sign is an anecdote. First time I came here two years ago, I cannot find where is the restroom and any of my classrooms. I asked the front desk for each classes. I don’t even know which one is the north and which one is the south campus. I think they should make a signage with proper information in front of the building and number each class room and maybe write down what classes are running in that class at what time. Thus, students can know what available time the class is empty. North campus is a little better than south campus. The numbering sections for classroom are not even clear in south campus.
2. The Seattle aquarium map. I easily get lost in the seattle aquarium and again need to ask the security and janitors where I am and how to get to a specific room. The signage is not clear. Furthermore, it does not match with the Seattle aquarium interior and exterior building design and color.


Related Urls

1.http://msy.com.au/
an example of a very poorly design website. It is an Australia website and its purpose is to sell computer parts. What even surprises is that this website has been running for years. The website is last updated September 2009. I think what they want to make is a lot like craigslist.com, but a very poor version of it.

2. http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

I love this website. It makes the most boring and a very complicated statistic, articles, or any information to be interesting and easy to understand. This website is actually a collection of a good information design. The designers definitely using the centric and content focused mind in their works.