Making complex information clear: an information design network

信息设计是一门迅速发展的学科，它涉及排版、平面设计、应用语言学、应用心理学、应用人机工程学、计算机等领域。它的出现是对人们理解和使用表格、法律文件、标志、计算机接口、技术信息和操作/组装说明的需求的回应。响应这些需求的信息设计者在信息利用方面取得了重大的经济和社会改进。信息设计参与了大多数复杂的项目，涉及与客户、供应商、合作伙伴和公民的沟通--特别是在误解成本巨大的情况下。不良信息设计的一些例子可能包括：表格填写错误且处理成本高昂；说明导致沮丧甚至危险，可能损害提供者的声誉；未能促进学习的教育材料；容易误解的科学和技术数据；以及难以导航和难看的网站。网络的参与者来自艺术大学、皇家艺术学院、兰卡斯特大学、卡迪夫大学、萨里大学；在欧洲，来自蒂尔堡大学和国际信息设计学院。该网络的一个显著特点是与一些巴西大学合作。巴西在过去10年中积极将信息设计引入其高等教育课程，并热衷于与英国合作开展学生和教职员工交流以及合作研究项目，特别是在健康和教学文本领域。该网络还包括信息设计从业者，以及来自英国政府和金融和卫生部门的用户。来自欧洲和巴西的国际合作伙伴进一步扩大了该网络的范围和覆盖范围。每个参与的机构都致力于制定其研究生研究议程，并将该网络视为培养未来信息设计研究人员的一种方式。我们包括两天的时间，研究学生将讨论他们的工作，教职员工和学生将考虑我们应该提供的培训类型。该网络以简化中心为中心，这是雷丁大学的战略研究重点之一。该中心的设立是为了促进信息设计的研究，并找到帮助人们理解复杂信息的方法。简化中心与其成员组织--政府和金融领域的信息设计用户--密切合作，因此该网络将从这一接触中受益。该网络寻求提升信息设计作为一门学术学科的形象，并作为清晰交流中的强大变革推动者。它将集中在三个领域：-图形素养，因为我们需要更多地了解人们是如何阅读文档的，以及他们认为可能有助于他们理解复杂信息的语言、结构和图形机制--《日常文档及其用户》将着眼于不同类型用户的特殊需求，例如第一语言不是英语的人、老年人、学习困难的人--《找出设计是否有效的方法》将探索合适的用户测试类型。通常，它是迭代设计--反复测试和修改解决方案。有时测试是非正式的；有时一个项目需要正式和广泛的测试和评估。这些主题将通过三个研讨会来探讨，网络参与者将在研讨会上提交论文并讨论他们在每个领域所做的项目。每个研讨会将包括研讨会，我们将在研讨会上寻求确定新的合作研究项目。该网络的工作将通过简化中心网站上的专用门户网站展示。

Information design is a rapidly growing discipline that draws on typography, graphic design, applied linguistics, applied psychology, applied ergonomics, computing, and other fields. It emerged as a response to people's need to understand and use forms, legal documents, signs, computer interfaces, technical information and operating/assembly instructions. Information designers responding to these needs have achieved major economic and social improvements in information use.Information design is engaged in most complex projects which involve communication with customers, suppliers, partners and citizens - particularly where the costs of misunderstanding are large. Some examples of bad information design might include: forms that are incorrectly completed and costly to process; instructions that cause frustration and even danger and that may damage the reputation of the provider; education materials that fail to promote learning; scientific and technical data that is easily to misinterpret; and websites that are difficult to navigate and unpleasant to look at.The participants in the network come from the University of the Arts, the Royal College of Art, Lancaster University, Cardiff University, the University of Surrey; and in Europe, the University of Tilburg and the International Institute of Information Design. A distinctive feature of the network is collaboration with some Brazilian universities. Brazil has actively introduced information design into its HE curricula over the last 10 years and remains keen to work with the UK in developing student and staff exchanges, and collaborative research projects, particularly in the area of health and instructional text. The network also includes information design practitioners, and users from government and the financial and health sectors from the UK. International partners from Europe and Brazil further extend the scope and reach of the network.Each institution involved is committed to developing its postgraduate research agenda and sees the network as a way of developing future researchers in information design. We are including two days in which research students will discuss their work, and staff and students will consider the kinds of training that we should provide. The network has as its hub the Simplification Centre, one of the University of Reading's strategic research priorities. This Centre has been set up to advance research in information design and to identify ways to help people make sense of complex information. The Simplification Centre works closely with its member organizations - information design users in government and finance - so the network will benefit from this engagement. The network seeks to raise the profile of information design as an academic discipline, and as a powerful agent of change in clear communication. It will focus on three areas:- 'graphic literacy' because we need to understand more about how people read documents and about the linguistic, structural and graphic mechanisms that they think might help them understand complex information- 'everyday documents and their users' will look at the particular needs of different kinds of users, such as those whose first language is not English, elderly people, people with learning difficulties- 'ways of finding out whether design works' will explore the types of user testing that are appropriate. Usually, it is iterative - design solutions are tested and modified repeatedly. Sometimes the testing is informal; sometimes a project justifies formal and extensive testing and evaluation.These themes will be explored through three symposia at which network participants will present papers and discuss projects they have worked on in each of the areas. Each symposium will include workshops in which we will seek to identify new collaborative research projects. The work of the network will be shown through a dedicated portal on the Simplification Centre website.