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Here is a very short summary of the contents of the conference. The initial draft text was written by Karel van der Waarde; substantial corrections and additions were made by Conrad Taylor and Dave Crossland.
Dave Crossland took extensive notes during
the conference.
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The Information Design Conference 2007 was held in Greenwich, London on Thursday 29th and Friday 30th March. There were about 110 participants, including 22 speakers, from about 20 countries including UK, USA, Brazil, Mexico, The Netherlands and Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, Portugal and Spain, Qatar, Hong Kong ... Many participants work across national borders: Brazilians in the US and UK, Brits abroad, Germans in the Netherlands and so on. And many had heard of the event from the InfoDesign-Cafe list, or its sister list, the announcements-only InfoDesign list.
One of the important effects of conferences is that it is easy to make contacts, initiate activities and test ideas. The available posters are an easy start to achieve this. Furthermore, students are introduced to potential employers, researchers can discuss their work with practitioners, practitioners find common ground for co-operation, and approaches from other specialisms can be picked up and applied to personal situations.
It is likely that audio recordings and slides of several of these talks will soon be available from the IDA website.
Yuri Engelhardt
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The first three talks were fairly theoretical in a sense that they looked at materials (diagrams, websites, articles about communication models) and tried to find patterns in these materials. However, their practical relevance is immediately clear when it is necessary to find out if diagrams are really effective, to find out how people make sense of a digital environment, and how designers describe their efforts to clients.
Yuri Engelhardt (University of Amsterdam) started the conference with the presentation of a framework that can describe diagrams. Just like in a language, it seems possible to name all elements in a diagram, and to indicate what the relations between these elements are. It is based on linguistic theories and the framework starts to have a real feeling of a ‘grammar’. Yuri showed that this approach is clearly suitable for the study of diagrams.
Katherine Gillieson (University of Reading) continued the theoretical thread by presenting a method to describe interactive media. Her examples were websites and she showed how different strands of theoretical research are necessary to describe how people build and make sense of digital environments.
Nathan Crilly (University of Cambridge) showed that the communication model of Claude Shannon and Weaver (sender — medium — receiver) has not received a fair treatment yet. Many communication models copy this original without a clear reference, and many start from misplaced rejections to it. By showing a number of alternatives, Nathan indicated how this could be remedied.
The second section showed commercial examples of work for utility bills (water, electricity, gas and telephone), telephone books and encyclopedias.
Andrew Boag
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Andrew Boag (Boag Associates, London) talked about the redesign of bills for utilities. There seem to be four consecutive stages of development, and Andrew showed how bills developed from ‘data-driven’ to ‘marketing driven’. Each step involves a further personalisation of the bill. Through this development, the balance between ‘marketing information’ and ‘data’ becomes less and less clear.
Rob Waller (Enterprise IG, London) picked up especially on this last point. Where does the marketing information on bills stop, and where do the other types of information — those that are legally required, those expected by the customer — start? How are we to deal with continuing high levels of functional illiteracy in the population, in a time when the choices being explained to customers and citizens are ever more complex?
Judy Delin (Enterprise IG, London) explained how different ‘voices’ are used to emphasize the ’on-brand’ messages of an organization, and how these sit with the presentation of information that is legally required as a result of regulation. The ingredients list on food packaging is usually a dry table with E numbers. Some companies are able to avoid this and use ‘a touch of lemon’, and ‘some nice cranberries’. This approach changes the interpretation of the legally required information to a more palatable description. But what do designers do when the regulator prescribed message seems to undermine the marketing message?
Gerlinde Schuller (Information Design Studio, Amsterdam) showed three projects: a redesigned telephone directory, an encyclopedia for young people, and a book exploring the intertwined histories of the bankrupted Zeppelin company and a new business which tranformed its gigantic hangar into an ‘indoor tropical island’. The design of these documents was based on principles of hypertextual linking, and Gerlinde suggested this suits a perceived new way in which people now read. Influenced by the reading of Web pages, people seem to scan, search and skip more than previously.
The contrast between the first three talks and the second four talks was substantial. The practical issues and considerations that lead to real products are frequently based on outspoken assumptions. Two of these assumptions are: ’people read now in a different way than they did before: more visual, more scanning’ and ‘there is somewhere a line between ‘marketing information’ (information to persuade) and ‘information’ (information to do). It is easy to see how both research and practice can support each other. The influence of commercial pressures and government regulation are clearly issues that frame the environment in which information designers work.
Carla Spinillo teaches at the Federal
University of Parana in Brazil
Karel van der Waarde displays the dense, small
text of some patient information leaflets
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The next three presentations focused on health and nutritional information.
The combination of these three presentations, with clear and substantiated criticism on the quality of the visual work of the Brasilian, US, and European governments, showed the detrimental effects of poor information design. The presentations also showed that improvements here are long term projects, but are certainly worth doing.
Carla Spinillo and Tiago Costa Maia (Federal University of Parana, Brazil) have investigated the effectivity of pictorial sequences as instructions for the use of male and female condoms in Brazil, where there is still a substantial population who have no or low literacy. The Brazilian government supports condom use in an attempt to reduce the increase in HIV-patients. The instructions that accompany condoms proved to be too difficult to understand, in part because they use pictorial conventions that are unknown to many (e.g. anatomical sections: women don’t usually think of themselves sliced down the middle), and there are gaps in time between pictures (e.g. there is usually something that happens between putting on a condom and taking it off!) where misunderstandings can occur.
Isabel Meirelles (Northeastern University, Boston, USA) spoke about the diagram of the ‘Food Pyramid’, used by the US Department of Agriculture. In this pyramid, the American government tries to illustrate what a well balanced food pattern is. The diagram is used in elementary education and healthcare. Unfortunately, the visual design of this diagram is open to a lot of valid criticism. The colours, dimensions, shapes, photographs and texts add more to confusion than to clarity, and arguably the intention to advise people about healthy eating has been undermined by commercial special interests.
Karel van der Waarde (Avans University, Breda, The Netherlands) showed the influences of the law, the regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry on the writing and design of patient package leaflets. Although these leaflets are intended for patients, they do not fully integrate the views and interests of this group of readers. Indeed, some better ideas for communicating with patients are made illegal by current regulations.
Thursday evening was devoted to socializing. First a reception and afterwards a dinner in an absolutely splendid location: the first floor of the Trafalgar Tavern pub in Greenwich, overlooking the Thames river and looking northwards towards the lights of the highrise architecture on the Isle of Dogs.
Nic Banks runs Atelier Pacific, a wayfinding
design agency based in Hong Kong and working across East and
Southeast Asia
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The main topic on Friday morning was ‘wayfinding systems’. Three speakers highlighted some of the practical issues related to the design of maps and signage. These three presentations on wayfinding systems gave an overview of the current state in practice, but raised several research questions as well. The line between ’marketing information’ (information to persuade) and ‘information’ (information to do) became again clear when in signage the commercially oriented information (’jewelry shop’ or ‘food corner’) and passenger oriented information (’emergency exit’ or ‘toilet’) are mixed.
Paul Stiff (University of Reading) showed a number of examples of maps and written geographical guidance, intended for a single use, : frequently a single meeting. People scribbled down instructions in letters, in e-mails, on napkins and on invitations. It is essential to understand the way in which the author and the reader of the instructions position themselves and how this is visualized on the guidance. Without a clear indication what top/bottom, left/right, front/back is, it is difficult to understand spatial instructions.
Nic Banks (Atelier Pacific, Hong Kong) explained how signage systems are used in a wide range of public transport systems (underground, airports, train stations) in Asia. Some of these facilities are huge. The different languages, reading directions, visual clutter and context influence the design of signage. Making a clear hierarchy and distinguishing ‘directional information’ from ’everything else’ is a complex task.
Colette Jeffrey (Enterprise IG, London) showed through examples (a shopping center in Dubai, London Heathrow Terminal 3) how signage systems seem to help people. The relation between architecture and signage needs continuous attention to make sure that people can move around in a built environment.
Myah Chun is devising a symbolic notation
to describe the timbre and shape of notes in electronic
music
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This session contained two presentations about methods of representation that did not easily fit into a session theme.
Myah Chun (Goldsmiths University, London) investigates the possibilty of new ways of representing sounds pictorially, as a way of communicating about music that is digitally generated. The common visuals (waveform, sonograms) are useful, but do not represent several characteristic elements such as sound texture (the difference between a guitar and a flute) and the attack-sustain-decay pattern of notes. She developed a visual system that represents this texture and can be hand-written. The project shows that it is likely that diagrams can reproduce a sound, as well as that sounds can be accurately visualized in diagrams.
Clive Richards (Coventry University) and Conrad Taylor (Ideography) showed the importance of knowledge about drawing, and how the use of varied line weights can help separate foreground from background, etc. The use of software has changed the skills as well as the available vocabulary. It is for example fairly difficult to make a tapered line or modify line thicknesses within a drawing. These elements are essential for the correct interpretation of illustrations and drawings, and a case was made for reviving traditional drawing media — and training.
The third session of day two was devoted to ‘interactions and instructions’.
María de Lourdes Fuentes Fuentes
speaking about the Mexical electoral process
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Simon Rubens (New Experience Ltd) presented a case study about the development of an instruction manual for a mobile telephone. They started by research with new customers in Italy and the UK, in their own homes. The instruction booklets were developed based on the categorization of functions used by these new customers. It led to a very substantial reduction in the amount of information that needed to be included in the manual.
José M de Souza & Mary Dyson (University of Reading) spoke about an experiment in which animated instructions about how to draw a half-circle using Bézier-curve drawing software were compared to static picture sequences. They especially looked at the perceived ‘comfort’ and perceived ‘clarity’ of these animations, and concluded that animations do add to the comfort of using instructions.
María G de Cossío and María de Lourdes Fuentes Fuentes (Centre for Advanced Studies in Design, Puebla, Mexico) investigated the visual design of the papers that were used in the 2006 elections in Mexico: not just the ballots, but also the huge volume of training materials for the citizen-volunteers who run the elections. The difference between the two leading candidates was only 0.62% and has led to enormous social turmoil, with the volunteers and electoral commission being attacked unjustly for incompetence, corruption or favouritism by both sides. The examples showed that the enormous organization of an election requires substantial design input if forms, ballot sheets, and instructions must be clear.
Rob Waller, IDC2007 Conference Director,
chaired the closing section of the conference.
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The conference was drawn to a close by Rob Waller (Enterprise IG) who showed how ‘Information Design’ is currently represented on Wikipedia. He suggested that this needs urgent improvement and organized a group discussion on this topic. It is likely that this will lead to changes in the Wikipedia article about information design — the second site listed on a Google search for information design!
A conference is by definition a social space, which can be designed well or badly. Information Design Conference 2007 benefited from several factors: including a substantial bunch of ‘old hands’ building an instant sense of community, and an outgoing welcome to newcomers to the space, supported by a comfortable milieu and socialising activities.
IDC 2007 is going to be a warm memory for many for years to come, and new friendships have been made that will continue across the Internet.