Information and Instructional Design

What is Information Design? According to Tech Head Stories it is:

"...is the practice of gathering, filtering, and presenting information in accordance with effective design principles in order to understand --- and communicate to others --- the essence, the meaning of that information."

That is, designing an effective way of communicating information without altering or loosing its meaning. Often the sort of information worked with is quantitative and results in diagrammatic representations, however this is not always the case.

Instructional design aims to convey an instruction, quite often pictorially. It encompasses things such as street signs which tell those reading them which way to go, or directional signs such as those found in an airport where a certain terminal is. Due to the large audience that these sorts of navigational and instructional signs have often they must be understandable by people who do not speak the language of the country the sign is in. If they did not meet this requirement then their purpose would be defeated as they are not conveying their meaning. It is for this reason that instructional design often makes use of signs and symbols that are internationally recognised.
EG: The Male and Female toilet signs are internationally recognised even if they are slightly changed to suit the culture they are in.

These two types of design are often applied to web design as without clarity of meaning and the ability to be understood by a large audience, the website would be confusing to most and useful to few. When the website in question is one which requires user interaction in order to be sucessfull and it lacks both quailties, the can user become confused and their desire to use the website can diminish.

Website navigation menus or links can be classed as instructional design and are perhaps the most common example of it. The body of information found on such websites can be classed as information design.

Take for example this website for MSY Technology. While this website is not interactive it demonstrates extremely well how off-putting badly designed navigation and content can be. I will let you click it and see why I say this, as words cannot express how disorganised and confusing it comes across as.

Ace of Cakes is a cooking show in UK about making cakes. It's website is interactive and is designed to draw its users through the website like they are there in the kitchen/tool shed with Ace. It's navigation down the bottom isn't the best as it doesn't explain what you are being shown, but if you've visited before and remember the shape of what you want to see then it becomes a fair bit more useful.

The way in which the information is presented is exceptional. When you hover over one of the coloured cutouts a yellow bar pops up. In it is the title of the information or of the link, and a little symbol on the right showing you whether it is a video, a picture, text, or an interactive close up. To see an example; click on the second last silhouette in the navigation menu and click on the dog. You'll see that when you hover over the red circles it brings up a text box describing a certain part of the cake, and a little animation that visually represents this.

With out putting into effect the principles of information and instructional design when creating interactive websites, Web 2.0 would not be what it is today. With the ability to expand through user involvement a higher level of organisation is required or the internet would become a maze of confusion and misleading information.