The Process of Information Design

The process of Information Design is quite familiar to me due to one of my previous jobs having set in place a number of the steps described in the Information Design Workbook. I had not been exposed to the level of organization that the process provides up until that point in my career. It was like a breath of fresh air to me as I quickly embraced the steps and the detailed information that I was provided due to the successful implementation of the process.

Step 1 – Requirements Gathering

“What does the audience need to know and why do they need to know it?” – (Baer 36)

As a web designer it was (and still is) my job to gather requirements for making client web sites not only look good, but also function properly and make it easy for users and customers to easily navigate the site and get to the information they want to see. The first step taken is to send the client a concept questionnaire. This is a document that asked the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How questions in such a way that helps lead the conversations I would have with the client at a later time. I helped to write the questions in that document as I needed to have specific answers prior to meeting the client for the first time. It is a delicate balance of asking the proper questions, but also not making it too cumbersome so that the clients don’t want to fill it out. The previous questionnaire asked 4-5 pages of questions and most of the time the documents came back partially filled out which made the initial client meeting much longer and more confusing than it needed to be.

View a generic concept questionnaire here. A PDF reader is required.

Step 2 – Project Information

“The creative brief acts as a single point of communication to ensure that everyone is on the same page as the project moves forward.” – (Baer 52)

Once the client meeting happened, the project manager would write up a “to-do” list. Looking back on it now, I guess that was considered to be the creative brief as it was sent to myself, the client, and anyone else who had action items to take care of before the next client meeting. The “to-do” list also made reference to important information that needed to be remembered but wasn’t necessarily a top priority. The overall design phase started after the initial client meeting and many times development and coding questions were brought up that weren’t appropriate for the creative part of the project.

Step 3 – Persona and Scenarios

“… creating personas (sometimes also referred to as user profiles) is an easy and fun way yo walk a mile in the shoes of your users.” – (Baer 58)

During the design phase, I was to act as a user to the web site I was creating. Many of the design decisions I made were based off the answers the client gave in the concept questionnaire and the data gathered from the first client meeting. One of the most important questions asked was “Who is your target audience?”. I needed to design a layout that appealed mainly to that selected group of people. I needed to understand the purpose of the site and how best to design the content for it. Was it a site meant to sell something? Was it a site asking for donations? What are the most important elements of the site? What sort of imagery is necessary to convey the overall message of the site? It was my job to get into the minds of the users and customers to come up with a layout that made sense and was easy to navigate.

Step 4 – Prototype

“Make your testing prototypes look enough like the final product so it’s clear to users that it’s a website or even a subway map.” – (Baer 82)

The final step of the Information Design process is coming up with a prototype. In my situation, the prototype is the artwork I create for the site. I would mock up a complete website template layout in Adobe Photoshop that showed the home page (and possibly inside page) layout with navigation, banner images, content, functionality, specific components, etc. This would not be a working website, but rather a static image (or images) for the client to view the layout, color and image choices, positioning of the various elements, and overall look and feel of the site. Often times there would be revisions I would have to make, but mostly those revisions were minor due to the fact that the information gathering process occurred at such a detailed level.

I am firm believer in this process as I have worked at jobs that did not utilize any organized form of information gathering. This makes for a confusing project and many times creates more work than what is necessary. I think having a general overall process that is well defined and flexible enough would allow anybody to make adjustments to fit their needs. In my case, a full blown creative brief wasn’t necessary as we already had the concept questionnaire filled out by the client that served as a backbone for the overall project. The creative brief for me was more a project management task that allocated responsibilities to various people at different stages of the project. For another company, the creative brief may be more substantial and perhaps the need for the concept questionnaire isn’t there. It is difficult to say whether or not more steps should be added to the overall process. I would argue keeping it at only a few steps as to not overly complicate the process. I do prefer having constant updates to the project rather than a one-time creative brief write-up. I think clients tend to change their minds a lot during the project life-cycle and documenting changes in a creative brief may or may not be the best choice. In my experience, different people prefer being updated in different ways and simple changes and updates documented in a 2-10 page creative brief may not be the best choice to get the message to the appropriate people.

For my Information Design blog I applied some of the process steps mentioned above. I realized the information in this blog pertains to a select group of people, classmates and instructors, so I chose to design the layout with that in mind. The imagery I created shows the books we are using for this class. The blog title and description clearly identifies the blog as an academic resource. I did set up a few other blog templates before I chose the one that is active now. This was a prototype step in that I wanted to make sure all the proper information was displayed in such a way that it was easy to navigate and maintain. Certain templates I chose originally did not satisfy that requirement in my opinion. Since I am a student in this class therefore I am the typical user or site visitor so that takes care of the persona requirement.

Please feel free to provide comments and feedback about my blog and how it applies to the process outlined in our reading material.

Works cited:
Baer, Kim - Information Design Workbook, Brockport Publishers, 2008