IIID Public Library Information Design Information Design Theories Rune Pettersson Institute for infology IIID Public Library The “IIID Public Library” is a free resource for all who are interested in information design. This book was kindly donated by the author free of charge to visitors of the IIID Public Library / Website. International Institute for Information Design (IIID) designforum Wien, MQ/quartier 21 Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Wien, Austria www.iiid.net Information Design Theories ID A1 ID A2 Rune Pettersson * Institute for infology Information Design Theories ISBN 978-91-85334-34-6 © Rune Pettersson Tullinge 2016 All illustrations are my own. 2 Preface Information design is a multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional, and worldwide consideration with influences from areas such as art and aesthetics, behaviour and cognition, communication, design, informa- tion, and language. Information design has practical and theoretical components. As an academic discipline we may view Information Design (ID) as a “theoretical practice” or as a “practical theory.” Information Design has incorporated facts, influences, methods, practices, principles, pro- cesses, strategies, theories, or parts of theories, and tools from a large number of supporting sciences. In this book I present one internal information design theory, and six external information design theories with more than hundred facts, hypotheses, and postulates. The internal theory, called infology theory, is based on research within the academic discipline Information De- sign. The six external information design theories are based on research in supporting sciences. These theories are called Aesthetics theory for ID, Facilitating theory for ID, Communication theory for ID, Provid- ing theory for ID, Information theory for ID, and Language theory for ID. This book is based on my article Information Design Theories, published 2014 in Journal of Visual Literacy, 33 (1), 1-94. Tullinge, Sweden Rune Pettersson, Ph.D. Retired Professor of Information Design 3 Contents Preface 3 Contents 4 Information design 8 Some descriptions 8 Early descriptions 9 Workability and usability views 11 Interdisciplinary approaches 12 Efficiency and effectiveness 13 Communication design 14 Goal and objectives 15 A young academic discipline 17 Contributors and contributions 19 Inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary 21 Research 22 Infology theory 30 Combined disciplines 30 Infology 31 Information design processes 32 Information design principles 37 Infography 42 Competence areas 43 The information designer 45 Information ethics 51 Infodidactics 52 Successful teaching 53 Practice and theory 54 A pedagogical model 54 Design disciplines 62 Design families and design genera 63 Design by reduction 65 Modern graphic design 66 Design principles 69 Instructional design principles 71 Quantitative information principles 72 Visual language principles 73 Functional design principles 73 4 Design processes 79 Design theories 80 Some other design areas 82 Industrial design 82 Information experience design 83 Interaction design 83 User experience design 84 Communication disciplines 85 Audience reception theories 87 Structuralism and Post-structuralism 87 Encoding–Decoding model 88 Uses and Gratifications Theory 89 Culture theories 90 Cultural studies 90 Cultivation 93 Gender studies 96 Interaction theories 97 Media literacy theories 99 Medium and message 99 Media literacy outcomes 101 Agenda-setting theory 102 Intended messages 103 Representations 105 Categories of representations 105 Objectives 110 Production of representations 112 The receivers 114 Receiver processes 115 Finding information 116 Media consumption 120 Information disciplines 124 Information architecture 125 Information literacy 126 Information competence 127 Information literacy and learning 128 Information quality 130 Information access 130 Information costs 132 Securing quality 133 Information science 138 5 Meta-information 138 Sense-Making 139 Information studies 140 The five rings 141 Some other areas 141 Information economics 141 Information ergonomics 142 Information Management 142 Information Technology 143 Semantic information theory 144 Language disciplines 145 Literacy theories 146 Literacy 147 Musicacy 148 Numeracy 148 Visuacy 149 Electracy/mediacy 151 Area specific literacies 153 Another literacy? 159 Plain language theory 160 Clarity of documents 160 Plain Writing Act 161 Terminology theory 162 Rhetorical theory 164 Semiotic studies 165 Study of signs 165 The Unified Theory of ID 167 Pattern language theory 168 Visual language theory 170 Visual communication 170 Combined verbal and visual language 172 Visual literacy theory 174 Definitions of visual literacy 176 Visual literacy abilities and competencies 177 Visual literacy skills 179 Cognitive disciplines 181 Approaches to knowledge 182 Theoretical knowledge traditions 183 Practical knowledge traditions 187 Attention theories 192 6 Capacity theories 194 Resource models 195 Perception theories 196 Clarity theory 196 Figure and ground theory 197 Gestalt theories 199 Affordance theories 201 Processing theories 203 Schema theory 204 Psychological information theory 209 Constructivist learning theory 209 Action theory 211 Dual coding theory 211 Practical application theories 213 Design of teaching aids 213 Cognitive theory of multimedia learning 215 Art and Aesthetic disciplines 218 Aesthetic proportion principle 218 Fine art 219 Information aesthetics 220 Beauty theories 223 Philosophy of beauty 224 Philosophy of art 226 Aesthetics and usability 228 Harmony principle 231 Dichotomy 231 Harmony in typography 232 Colour theories 233 Colour wheels 233 Colour systems 234 Colour for information 238 References 240 7 Information design The people of ancient Egypt communicated in a uniquely symbolic manner. The first “travel guides” were produced and sold as early as 4,000 years ago. They were the Egyptian Books of the Dead and con- tained advice and information, in an integrated design with a verbal and visual amalgam of text and pictures on coping with the trip to the Kingdom of Death. The Books of the Dead may be the first examples ever where text, pictures and graphic design really are integrated in a purposeful way. There are number of definitions of design, information and mes- sage. In this book I have used the following definitions: Design represents two concepts: 1) Identification of a problem and the intellectual effort of an originator, manifesting itself in plans and specifications to solve the problem. 2) The outcomes of each specific design process, such as products, services, processes, and systems. Information refers to the result of manipulating, organizing and processing data in a way that adds to the knowledge of the person re- ceiving it (Simlinger, 2007, p. 8). Message refers to information content conveyed from a sender to a receiver in a single context at one occasion. The concept message de- sign is used as an umbrella term for the five areas graphic design, in- formation design, instruction design, mass design, and persuasion de- sign. All these design areas deal with the design of messages, however with different objectives. Some descriptions In my own work I have used the following definition of the general con- cept information design (Pettersson, 1998, p. 27; 2002, p. 19): In order to satisfy the information needs of the intended receivers, information design comprises analysis, planning, presentation and understanding of a message–its content, language and form. Re- gardless of the selected medium, a well-designed information ma- terial will satisfy aesthetic, economic, ergonomic, as well as subject matter requirements. 8 Information design does not primarily include areas like advertising, entertainment, fine arts, news, and propaganda. There are many more definitions and descriptions of information design. As an academic dis- cipline information design is written “Information Design” (with I and D in uppercase letters). Early descriptions Some early descriptions of information design occurred already in the 1960s. Other groups deal with design of communication, efficiency and effectiveness, interdisciplinary approaches, workability and usability. An early document is the article The design of information by Con- rad (1962). Conrad mentioned an accident reported in the newspapers, where a boy froze to death because a search party was not organised— the boy’s relatives knew he was missing, but did not know how to oper- ate the public telephone at the end of their street. Thus they could not call for help. The Information Design Journal started in 1979. According to Rob Waller (IDA, 1997) the IDJ was intended to be a counterpoint to the corporate identity and glitzy graphics that seemed to take over graphic design at that time. IDJ defined information design in the following way: “to apply processes of design (that is, planning) to the communi- cation of information (its content and language as well as its form).” However, as early as 1981 Hurlburt noted problems with broad terms like information design (p. 22): Terms like information design, visual communication, and even graphic design are so broad in their connotations that it is impos- sible to use them accurately to describe specific functions. The term information design is often used to cover all of the areas of two-dimensional design that are non-persuasive. Many design schools use the term as a dividing line between ‘commercial adver- tising’ and more ‘respected’ forms of graphic design. This is not a completely