From left to right, Ann Marcus Quinn, Keith Tam, Sue Walker, Theresa Schilhab and Maarten Renckens work together to extract common themes from the sample documents discussed.
Welcome to visitors Ann Bessemans, Kevin Bormans and Maarten Renckens, from PXL, Belgium, Ann Marcus Quinn from the Department of Technical Communication, University of Limerick, Ireland, Theresa Schilhab from the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark and Matthew Hayler, from University of Birmingham’s English Department, as well as Rebecca Bullard and Paddy Bullard from University of Reading’s English Department. They are joining our ‘home team’ at Centre for Information Design Research for an EU funded workshop Reading to do which examines the differing experiences of carrying out tasks using paper and electronic documents. Our first day started with a show and tell of documents participants had selected as interesting examples of reading to do, from instructions on changing a skateboard truck, through on-line passport applications, to advice on training fearful dogs. The topic list alone reinforces the wide scope of the workshop topic and the importance of information design in people’s everyday work and leisure tasks.