Centre for Information Design Research

A little ambiguity is resolved by seeing both doors for the toilets at Royal Mail’s marketing offices

Alison Black gave a talk, yesterday, at a masterclass in customer communications for commercial and public sector organisations. The event, organised by GI Solutions, was held at Royal Mail’s offices (hence the picture above). Alison’s talk introduced the concept of information design and drew on her paper with Karen Stanbridge, Documents as ‘critical incidents’ in organization to consumer communication, to illustrate how people respond to documents they receive and where the quality of information design can support or frustrate them.

From left to right: Rupesh Vyas, Alison Black, Josefina BravoBurnier, Rodrigo Ramirez, Keith Tam and Sejal Tiwari.

We were fortunate yesterday to be visited by international information design researchers, Rodrigo Ramirez from the School of Design at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and Rupesh Vyas and Sejal Tiwari from the National Institute for Design, Gujarat. Lunch provided an opportunity for lively discussion of the use of design in government and the methods and merits of user research in information design.

Some interesting talks at the IIID Vision Plus Conference this year, held at Birmingham City University. The two-day conference provided an engaging discussion of the ways in which information design relates to and improves performance in different areas. Some might be more direct, such as healthcare and wayfinding, and other are not so obvious, for example the performing arts.

Two graduates of the MA Information Design programme at the University of Reading presented at this conference.

Oliver Tomlinson, head of TDL London talked about his experience in the design of diagrams and how they can benefit businesses. TDL London specialises in applying information visualisation in the creation of bidding documents, for example major construction projects. They work with documents supplied by the client and rethink the delivery of the information in a visual way to make it easier to understand and more engaging. The bids are comprised of technical and commercial information, and so the transformation has proved key in helping companies win business. In his talk, Oliver discussed the benefits of embedding an information designer in the client’s workspace, and how that has facilitated the communication of specific needs of the client.

Rodrigo Ramirez, academic from PUC School of Design in Chile, talked about the design and testing of RutaCL, a new typeface for Chile’s highway signage. After reviewing the models that have most influenced the look of Chile’s road signs, Rodrigo focused on the main affordances of the new design and how these were tested. The testing process was undertaken by a design undergraduate student as a final project. The two-stage legibility experiment, which tested for preference and performance, showed the superiority of RutaCL. tiposur.info

The Houses of Commons provided a very historic and concrete setting for a discussion, yesterday evening, of ‘speculative design’ – the use of images, models or videos of far future scenarios to encourage research participants to give their responses to it. Speculative design is one of many tools the Policy Lab are introducing to civil servants, the rationale being that, while it can’t predict the future accurately, the very specific presentations in images and models help people focus their thinking far ahead. The picture shows presentation of a project led by the government’s Foresight Office, with consultants, Strange Telemetry, to investigate the impact of an aging society, as it might be experienced 40 years from now. The team used speculatively designed images to stimulate discussion of issues around work, mobility and service provision.

The event was interesting from an information design perspective, since it’s hard to imagine that a discussion group 40 years ago could have anticipated the instant access to information we have now,  the impact that has on everyday life and the design challenges it presents. Still the focus of yesterday’s event, on tools to stimulate future thinking, was an interesting one, and followed in a long tradition of designers reflecting on the most appropriate design methods to use in their projects.