Technology Design Process: Overview

In this series of posts, I will explore the five general steps of the technology design process: Envision; Discover; Design; Develop; Launch.

I find that initially starting a brand new project is exciting!! Many times I also find it to be a bit daunting, as I stare at a blank page unsure where to begin. To help overcome this initial writers block, I begin by breaking the project into five elementary steps. This simple five step process helps ensure that any new technology project is successful in the eyes of its stakeholders.

1. Envision
2. Discover
3. Design
4. Develop
5. Launch

Now while many might rightfully argue that each of these steps is a process of its own, I contend that these five fundamental high-level steps are key to all successful technology projects. I have personally utilized this simple plan equally well for web site design projects, database design projects, as well as any other technology project that I have been faced with.

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Envisioning is a business-centric, problem discovery, situation-assessment and opportunity planning process. It is designed to improve the odds for an effective solution by establishing clear business-focused success criteria.

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During discovery, business stakeholders are asked to answer the who, what, when, and how much questions.

• Who will represent the interests of each involved business department?
• What are the business goals, expectations, and success criteria?
• When is completion required?
• How much is budgeted?

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Once the project is properly defined, the design begins. This is the prototype phase of the project. Prototype concepts are basic design ideas; the first look at the project's possibilities. Discovery and design form an iterative loop, as concepts are vetted, including impact to timelines and costs.

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After the design is signed off and finalized, development begins. Depending on the project's specific requirements this phase may include:

• application coding (programming)
• environment testing
• stress testing
• user acceptance testing
• operations, backup and recovery procedures creation
• documentation

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Once the development efforts are completed, the new technology solution is ready for deployment. The launch however is about more than just deploying the application. It involves raising awareness, ensuring operational readiness, and tracking acceptance.

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When applied properly, the steps of the design process can save time and money (as well as headaches and re-work). And by establishing clear success criteria coupled with open communication and collaboration my stakeholders are practically guaranteed to deploy a winning solution and have a great experience in the process.

Over the course of my career, this simple project outline has proven itself equally applicable to web site design, database development, business system construction or any [insert technology project type here] project I have encountered.

In the coming posts, I will explore in more depth each of the phases.

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Building a Sitemap

Few would consider building or remodeling a home without blueprints, yet many construct and redesign their web sites without a sitemap. 

Few would consider building anything much larger than a garden shed without blueprints.  The results for those that have are interesting, to say the least.

One of the most famous examples is the Winchester House in California.  Built continuously over the course of 38 years, the house was constructed and renovated one room at a time without consideration for the other rooms surrounding it. 

This lead to some very unique features:

•  stairways to nowhere
•  doors opening onto brick walls
•  second story doors exiting the
   house without deck or stairs

You would be hard-pressed to find someone desiring to take on a construction project like the Winchester House today.  Yet I work with clients regularly that have websites originally constructed over 15 years ago which have just evolved, new sections being added, sections being removed from site navigation but still linked to from internal pages, etc.

A scan of a current client revealed their website had over 500 pages, while they were sure it contained less than 30.  Ten years of organic growth and design led to a complex site with many hidden pages and more than a few broken internal links.

This is where the value of a sitemap comes into play.  While many may have utilized a sitemap as a wayfinding tool on a website, their primary use is in organizing a web design project.  Kim Baer, author of Information Design Workbook writes:

Sitemaps are foundational tools of information architecture, related to the master planning documents that architects have traditionally used when designing extremely complex building projects such as hospitals or university campuses.

They are also an excellent tool to ensure consensus among the various stakeholders in a project.  Detailed sitemaps, such as those built by a graphics tool like Visio are excellent reference documents, both during the construction of a website and afterwards for planning future renovations. 

Read about: Mindmapping.

I use these regularly, but find using a mind-mapping tool in brainstorming sessions with a client to be far more fluid to the dynamic nature of the meeting.  Once consensus is reached in the meeting, I produce a detailed map for the client to review and ultimately sign off on.  This then becomes our jointly agreed upon plan.

Don't let your company's web presence become the next Winchester House.  Take the time to complete a site map before beginning page construction.

Resources Cited:

Baer, Kim, and Jill Vacarra. Information Design Workbook: Graphic Approaches, Solutions, and Inspiration+ 30 Case Studies. Rockport Pub, 2008.

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Wayfinding in the Real World

The art of wayfinding is as old as written history.  In this post I will look at a modern real-world implementation of this ancient art.

The art of wayfinding has been utilized for as long as there has been written communication.  Ancient cave paintings are known to depict crude maps.  For overland travel, cartography and trailblazing have been combined for centuries.  In earlier eras, trailblazing many times consisted of marking trees along a trail with hatchet chops.  Today this is done in a more ecologically friendly form, using paint or plastic markers.

Near my home, Norman Lake State Park uses a combination of signs, maps, and trail-blazing marks to aid in wayfinding.  This utilizes many of Passini’s Sign-Posting principles of Information Design, including presenting the right information, where it is needed (Jacobson, 2000, p. 90). 

This is evidenced by the placement of a general map, and a detailed insert in the parking lot. 

Then at the trailhead there is a clear sign as well as a trailblazing mark.  Following the color and shape of the mark leads one down the full trail.  Turns are indicated by two marks, the upper being left of the lower if the trail veers to the left, or on the right for trails turning right. These standards in form and presentation greatly aid in both finding the desired path and remaining on that path.

Resources Cited
Jacobson, R. (Ed.). (2000). Information Design. The MIT Press.

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The tools I use.

In this article I will go over the Information Design tools I regularly use in the production of this blog.

I was recently asked what tools I have used in the design and production of this blog.  There have been three primary tools I have relied heavily upon.  The first is Photoshop from Adobe for the creation and manipulation of the images displayed on this site.  The second is CorelDraw from Corel.  This I use for the production line art, which I then finalize in Photoshop.  The difference between these two is Photoshop is a raster-based (think pixels) product, while CorelDraw is a vector-based (think lines) program.  Raster images do not scale well, but vector images are not designed for display in web browsers. 

For information design purposes, I would add two additional desktop tools from Microsoft - Excel for the production of charts and graphs; Visio for the creation of flowcharts and certain types of other graphics.

However, the single most important tool in use for the production of this site is Blogger – the content management system underlying this blog.  Blogger provides a number of key tools for the creation and customization of a blog site.  Starting with fully customizable HTML-based templates, and easily added gadgets, the system allows for each blogger to craft a site unique to themselves.

While the tool allows an author to fully customize their blog using client-side Javascript, CSS, and HTML, it also provides simple to use editors and site designers that require no knowledge of these technologies.  Additionally it provides for building a social network component into a user’s blog through comments. Finally it provides an excellent set of tools for performing web analytics, showing how much traffic a site is seeing and where that traffic is originating.

Best of all, Google provides all features of Blogger for free.  There are no upgrades.  The only opportunity to spend money is on high-end third-party templates.
 

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Every picture tells a story

While a picture may be worth a thousand words, it is only valuable when people look at it.  InfoGraphics adds the additional complexity of needing to be understood.  The challenge becomes producing the right image, shown at the right time to the right audience. In this article I will explore Dan Roam's methodology for making the right choices.

Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. This is especially true today where we have relatively little time to spend on absorbing knowledge in our information dense society. The new profession of Information Design and concept of InfoGraphics has risen up around this fact – aiding people in more rapidly grasping meaning through transforming information into images.

However, it needs to be the right image presented at the right time to the right audience. To accomplish this, Dan Roam recommends that an Information Designer utilize a methodology he has dubbed Imagining. As a preamble, the designer is encouraged to close their eyes and begin visualizing what is not readily visible. A designer draws connections between different bits of information and develops a mental understanding. They then work on how to best visually portray the information to convey the information in an easily digestible format.

But what format? While Microsoft Excel provides 53 chart types to convey information. Microsoft Visio adds hundreds more to the possible formats. However, all of the charts and graphs can be grouped into one of six archetypes. Each of these are associated with one of six basic questions: Who/What; How much; Where; When; How; or Why. This forms the first axis of Dan Roam’s Visual Thinking Codex. To use the codex, a designer needs to decide the type of information to be conveyed. Is it about a person, a group or an item? Then develop a portrait. Is it a question of how many or how much? Then create a chart. Is it about a location or structure? Then craft a map. Is it time-dependent? Then construct a time line. Is it about how things fit together? Then build a flowchart. Or is this a question of WHY? This calls for a multi-variable plot which can be the hardest to create.

Readers of Mr. Roam’s The Back of the Napkin are familiar with his SQVID (and I am not talking about seafood). SQVID stands for Simple, Quality, Vision, Individual attributes, Delta (change). He uses these five attributes to define the five dimensions of all infographics. Each dimension is an either/or decision to be made based upon the target audience. Is this a simple drawing, or should it be elaborate? Is portrayal of Quality or Quantity more important? Is the audience more concerned about a vision of the future, or today’s execution? Is the goal to highlight a single attribute, or compare items? Finally, should focus be on changes or on the status quo?

While all well-developed infographics contain all five aspects, the next step in leveraging the codex is to determine which aspect is most critical. For example, if we are looking to describe inter-relation of data – ie, show where items overlap – then we would go to the Where row and determine that a map is the best method for conveying the information. Next, if we determine that the information is primarily focused on a goal or vision, we would look to the V column and see that the optimal framework for our use is a Venn diagram.

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) world giving map provides a clear example. From their map we can determine that their intent was to show how much each country gave and how they compared. Using the codex, a bar chart is recommended. However, the nature of information – country data – includes a Where factor, which would indicate the use of a map. To encompass both the Where and How Much factors, CAF utilized a bubble chart where the relative size of each bubble was indicative of their rank and then placed each bubble in the approximate location of the country it represents.

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InfoGraphics - cure for Information Overload

As the volume of information increases, the time we have to assimilate knowledge from any one item decreases. To help counteract this effect, Information Designers have begun to utilize pictographs to more readily convey understanding. These pictographs have been dubbed InfoGraphics.

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Design Tools

In The Back of the Napkin Dan Roam explains the four step process of Visual Thinking: Look; See; Imagine; and Show. The Information Design process would appear focused on the Show step, and most design tools are targeted there. However, tools do exist to aid in the other steps. In this article I will be examining one that I use regularly when working with clients as we collectively Imagine their future design.

In The Back of the Napkin Dan Roam explains the four step process of Visual Thinking:

1. Look - Take in all the information available to build an initial "Big Picture"
2. See - Assess the information and begin making connections
3. Imagine - With eyes closed, visualize what isn't immediately obvious and begin manipulating the information to make hidden connections visible
4. Show - Find the best method to visually represent a summarization of the information observed and the connections found

The Information Design process would appear to be focused on the Show step, and most design tools are targeted there.  Andrew LeBarron  briefly reviews three of these: Piktochart; Gelphi; Gliffy; all of which can be used to create striking visualizations of information. While not as readily visible in the final web design, one tool I frequently use is FreeMind.

FreeMind is a mind mapping tool useful in creating diagrams that visually outline information. A mind map is a graphical way to represent ideas and concepts. It is a visual thinking tool that aids in structuring information, helping us to better analyze, comprehend, synthesize, recall and generate new ideas. A mind map is often created around a single word or text, placed in the center, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are added. Major categories radiate from a central node containing the key idea, with lesser categories as sub-branches of the larger branches. Categories can represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items related to the central  idea.

Mind Maps organize the information in the same way our brain organizes information. This makes it very natural and easy to understand. Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures create powerful images for our brains to remember.

We have two halves to our brains which think in different ways. The left half thinks linearly following direct linkages to related ideas. Our right brain likes to see the whole picture with colors and flow. A mind map caters to both sides of the brain at the same time, which makes it a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting complex concepts to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

Brainstorming is encouraged through the use of a radial hierarchical layout and non-linear creation of categories. This creation process generates mind maps that are unique in structure and design, making it easy for our brains to process and retain the information.

I have found mind mapping a useful practice in helping clients identify key driving forces behind web projects, as well as the information and its association to be contained within their web-based system.  Below is an example mind map created interactively with a client describing a future cloud-based business system.

 

Works cited:
Roam, Dan. The back of the napkin (expanded edition): Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures. Portfolio, 2009.

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Web presence preliminaries

The Information Design process is composed of four general phases:

1. Analysis – Determine the Who, What, Where, When, How of the information need
2. Synthesis – Construct a Creative Brief
3. Validate – Use personas and scenarios based on target audience to confirm design suppositions
4. Prototype – Develop, test, & fine tune designs with the assistance of a representative focus group

In this article I will explore two specific items unique to the web design process that are often overlooked in the Analysis & Synthesis phases: Web presence purpose & desired outcomes.

On average an "action" site has 15 seconds to motivate a new visitor to take some action before the user losses interest and bounces away from the site. While it could be argued that this blog fits more into the category of an information site (some may even propose it is a personal vanity site), the fact remains that I was unable to motivate you, the viewer, to take action within 15 seconds.

This is why it is essential that the type of site and target purpose for a new web presence be part of the early design discussions and be included in the creative brief. Without it, the site has a large probability of loosing the visitor.

Congratulations

One of the two "calls to action" on this page motivated you to click for additional information. On average an "action" site has 15 seconds to motivate a new visitor to take some action before the user losses interest and bounces away from the site.

This is why it is essential that the type of site and target purpose for a new web presence be part of the early design discussions and be included in the creative brief. Without it, the site has a large probability of loosing the visitor.

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Stop the clock to read more

The typical process of transforming an Information Need into an Information Design flows through four general phases: Analysis, Synthesis, Validation, Prototype. When the design medium is to be a web presence, additional information needs to be gathered.

As part of the analysis phase, the purpose of the website must be understood.  Websites can be categorized into three general classes:

• Personal/Vanity – websites focused on the author or information producer, not the information consumer – Facebook, Myspace, Google+ share this classification
• Informational – websites constructed to convey information, such as Wikipedia, Huffington Post, and Google
• Action – websites designed to stimulate a "call to action" from the end user.

Learn more

Action sites have 15 seconds to capture a visitor's attention and motivate action

Many sites on the web fall into the Action category, whether it is to send a letter to your Congressman, watch a video, join a mailing list, make a contribution, or purchase a product. Helping a client to fairly and accurately assess the intended purpose for their new web presence can be challenging.  One client I worked with recently was certain that their site was to help educate people on the advantages of craniosacral therapy.  When I asked what the business hoped to gain from a redesign of the website, I was told it was to increase subscription to their mailing list and increase attendance at their workshops.

These responses showed the desired outcome was motivating visitors to take action - join the mailing list and/or attend a workshop which in turn made it clear to the client this was an Action site.  Distilling desired outcomes down to the top two or three becomes part of the synthesis phase and can be equally challenging.

Another client I consulted was unhappy with the results their website was generating.  Analytics showed it had reasonable traffic but had an exceptionally low conversion rate and lost over 80% of all first time visitors within 15 seconds.  Looking at the home page revealed 14 calls to action including:

Read a book excerpt Peruse  the online store Meet the author Attend a book signing Attend an event Organize an event in your city Read about state and local legislation

Download a free podcast Join the mailing list Subscribe to the blog Friend them on Facebook Read about the latest events Influence your Congressman Take action locally

Working with the client we identified the key desired outcome was capturing contact information, so we reduced the calls to action to three - join the mailing list, subscribe to the blog, friend them on Facebook. One year later, the bounce rate had reduced from 80% to 30% and the conversion rate was over 10%.

Taking these factors into account early in the analysis and synthesis phases can greatly improve the outcome of the overall design project.

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Sign-posting the web

Romedi Passini in Jacobson's Information Design shows that the objective for sign-posting is not about designing signs, instead it is about helping "people move efficiently to their chosen destinations". This is also applicable to web design, as sign-posting is employed to aid visitors in finding their desired information.
We are constantly inundated with data. Television, radio, Internet, mail, billboards, smartphones, GPS systems, etc. all attempt to provide us with information. However, until we are ready to process that information into knowledge, it blurs together to become background noise.

The act of processing information is driven by a need in the moment for specific knowledge.  This is typically brought about by an event for which there is not a ready precident. To clarify, let's compare two situations involving car travel.

The first is the morning commute to work.  I get up, get ready and head out.  Many times I arrive at work having not even consciously recognized all that I have passed.  My brain is basically on autopilot, only focusing on the unexpected, after all I know where I am going, I have been going there for years, and hopefully will continue for years to come.

Now, compare that to taking a trip to a new destination, like Disneyworld in Florida.  Now I have a number of decisions to make - what route will I follow, where will I stay on the way down, how often will I need to stop?  All of these become secondary decision to the primary decision to visit Disney world.  All require a higher order of awareness to the surroundings to ensure a safe arrival. Effectively finding the proper route or wayfinding becomes an active process.

Specific knowledge is required at each decision point.  Information designers understand this and create targeted signage to aid us in making those decisions. These same information design principles can be applied to the Internet, providing clear signposts to aid in finding our way through the maze of data.

One key point to remember is that standardization of sign posts greatly aids in rapidly processing them.  Think for a moment if stop signs varied in color and shape - would it add to confusion and possibly accidents as people failed to correctly process the signage? These same standardizations can assist website visitors in finding their way.  Mark Griffen, managing director of  Ranking Quest, makes the point that simple clear sign posting aids web vistors in finding the information they seek and enhances their overall experience.

These basic principles are at work on this site.  Starting with four  icons representing the basic types of links - internal, external, secure, and eMail - I have worked to incorporate current usage conventions into this site.  Take for example the two external links in the paragraph above.  The external icon following the link clearly signposts that a visitor will be leaving this site.

On the home page, you might have noticed the short article discriptions followed by a sign post inviting you to read more. These short descriptions, refered to as teasers, function like a directory in a building lobby, helping visitors find what they are seeking.

Read about: Adding teasers to Blogger.

The key is to keep the volume of information manageable with clear and consistant signposts to aid in navigating the site.  A visitor can then follow the marked route to gain the additional information they seek. 

Sometimes it can be as important to know where you have been as to know where you are going.  The fairytale Hansel & Gretel has the children leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back.  A similar sign-posting technology under the same name exists on the web.  If you look to the top of this page, you can find a trail of breadcrumbs leading your way back to to the homepage.

A final element of signposting is font choices. Today the web offers many additional free font types. Used judiciously, font types can draw the web visitor's eye towards key items. In the case of my blog, I use specific fonts for the teaser headlines and the labels in my "Cloud of thoughts" widget. The size of the font in headlines will typically be the first place a visitor will scan. If none of these are relevant to what they seek, the thought cloud will be the next to draw their attention. In this way I help facilitate a visitor's decision process. Like road signs along the highway, these visual clues help my visitors wayfind their path towards the knowledge they seek.

Works cited:
Jacobson, Robert E. Information Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2000. Print.\

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Tech Tip: Adding teasers to Blogger

One of the drawbacks I have noticed in most of Blogger's templates is a lack of short teasers for display on the home page. After a bit of research I uncovered a method to address this. Many blogs have an index page for their home page that displays a list of articles with a short description - or teaser - about the article.  The free Blogger templates I have used do not seem to incorporate this feature, so I investigated ways of adding the capability to my blog.
First, I would caution anyone undertaking this - have a good comfort with HTML, CSS, and at least one programming language {javaScript, PHP, ect.} before beginning.  Also, be prepared to have your blog display only a # as you work through the solution.

Before I begin, there is a bit of background to cover.  Blogger uses templates to determine what content is displayed and how it is arranged. The template has a number of "layout data tags" that can be used to determine what to display and when to display it. A complete listing of these tags can be found at Google>Help>Customize Your Blog>Layouts. Additionally, it is usefull to understand the logic constructs of Blogger's templating language. For this tech tip, I will be using the IF construct which is composed of three tags:

• <b:if cond='condition goes here'>
• <b:else>
• </b:if>

I will also leverage the blog.pageType data tag.  It typically has one of three values: item - it is the full blog post; index - it is on the index, or home page; archive - it has been moved into the archives.  When the blog.pageType is item, we want to display the full post. When it is index, we only want to display the teaser.  I will also be working with the post.body data tag which holds the contents of each post and the post.url data tag which houses the address of the full blog post.

To differentiate between teasers and the full post, I use two different CSS classes - teaser, fullpost.  I will place the text in my posts into the appropriate <span> so that the HTML of my posts looks like this:

<div class="teaser>
{Teaser text goes in here}
</div>
<div class="fullpost">
{Full post text goes in here}
</div>

One more item before we begin.  I would recommend that anyone attempting to edit their Blogger template utilize a good line editor.  I prefer using the shareware editor notepad++ which can be downloaded from http://notepad-plus-plus.org/.  However any good line editor will do.  I would caution against using the default Windows Notepad or a full word processor such as Microsoft Word.

Now let's begin.  The first step is to acquire the template HTML.  To do this, open your blogger account and select Template from the left menu.  Click on the Edit HTML button to open a window containing the template.  Once open, click on the Expand Widgets Template checkbox. Now click anywhere in the HTML code and press {Ctrl+A} to select all the text and {Ctrl+X} to cut it to the clipboard.  Paste this into your line editor.

Inside the editor, find the <data:post.body/> data tag and replace it with:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
      <style>.teaser{display:none;}</style>
      <style>.fullpost{display:inline;}</style>
      <p><data:post.body/></p>
<b:else/>
     <style>.fullpost{display:none;}</style>
     <style>.teaser{display:inline;}</style>
     <data:post.body/>
     <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'><br/>
          <a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read more...</a>
     </b:if>
</b:if>

This will turn on teasers on the index page, then turn them off on the actual post pages. You then select all from my line editor {Ctrl + A}, copy it to the clipboard {Ctrl + C} and paste it back into my Blogger template window {Crtl +V} and click on Save template. 

Next, choose Settings > Post and comments > Post Template and add the following to the Post Template:

<div class="teaser">
{teaser text goes here<br /><br />}
</div>

<div class="fullpost">
{post text goes here<br /><br />}
</div>

These same <div> tags can be inserted into existing posts to incorporate teasers.  Just edit each post, and turn on HTML.  Add <div class="fullpost"> to the top of the post and </div> to the bottom.  Then insert <div class="teaser"> </div> at the very top and type the teaser between the div tags.

Depending on your template, there may be a number of items displayed below the Read more... link.  I suggest working through each item below the <data:post.body> data tag, commenting them out {<!--   -->} and seeing the result on the index page of your blogger site.  Once you have it the way you like it, replace each comment pair with <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'> and </b:if>

That's it.  Save the final template and your site will now have teasers on the index page.

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Areas of Focus

In my career I have found that most information systems can be broken down into 4 high level components - input forms, output, whether it is to the screen or print, data storage and processing that ties it all together.

In my career I have found that most information systems can be broken down into 4 high level components - input forms, output, whether it is to the screen or print, data storage and processing that ties it all together.

While traditional application design has spent it's time in the reverse order - that is starting with the processing and ending with input forms - inverting this paradigm can lead to greatly enhancing the human usability of a given system.  Increased usability directly correlates to how quickly and thoroughly it will be adopted.

Apple is a perfect example of this.  Twice Apple has broken the mold by generating a new paradigm for usability.  First in the early 1980's Apple introduced the Macintosh with a graphical user interface.  Then in 2007 Apple again revolutionized the way we interface with devices when they introduced the iPhone.

Most people today take for granted graphical user interfaces, such as Microsoft's Windows and have only limited knowledge of the computer green screens from the past.  Likewise, many of the gestures and interface designs pioneered by Apple in the iPhone are now the norm for phones.

Finally, application development capabilities have progressed such that most anything which can be visualized can be programmed.  Thus the focus of design needs to shift towards the human factors and much greater time spent on both the usability and aesthetics of applications.

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What is Information Design?

To me, Information Design is the intentional conveyance of knowledge through the transfer of relevant information filtered from the vast sea of data collected through the ages.  Quite a mouthful, but as the old saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words. Welcome to my thoughts about information design.  Within this blog I will endeavor to not only convey data about information design but to illustrate these principles in action. 

So what is information design? As Melissa Winans, a fellow classmate, puts it: Information Design "includes designing everything that an individual may look at as a whole".  I would extend that to include other senses as well and designs with intentionality. For example, the header graphic, the brief message, and the background music on this site are all targeted towards conveying aspects of information design.

Robert Jacobson, author of Information Design (1999) describes information design as "the systematic arrangement and use of communication carriers, channels and tokens to increase the understanding of those participating in a specific conversation (pg 4)". Andrew Paul LeBarron II, another colleague, simplifies and clarrifies Jacobson's definition to being the use of shapes and symbols to communicate.

Monks of the middle ages used this principle, adding illustrations to the books they were scribing to aid in the comprehension of the written word.

But what is Information Design? 
To me, Information Design is the intentional conveyance of knowledge through the transfer of relevant information filtered from the vast sea of data collected through the ages.  Quite a mouthful, but as the old saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Works cited:
Jacobson, Robert E. Information Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2000. Print.\
Enigma, Mea Culpa, 1990. MP3

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