Design Lore

Gestalt Principles of Organization

2008-09-15T12:44:00.001-04:00

Gestalt Theory was proposed in the early 1900's to try to understand how perception works, and how people react to certain stimuli automatically. In contrast to the atomistic approaches to these topics at that time, the Gestalt Theorists proposed that wholes are qualitatively different than parts. This is generally expressed as: "the whole is greater than the sum of parts". The classic example is of a melody to a song. The melody is more than just each individual note. In fact, the melody becomes its own separate unit -- a melody -- that is more than just individual notes strung together. One can change the key (thus the information value of the notes), yet retain the melody.

The Gestalt Theorists proposed several principles for how the mind is able to organize parts into wholes. The first principle is:

Pragnanz
Pragnanz is the idea the simplest structure is the most psychologically stable, the most resistant to change. Generally messages can take many form that vary in complexity, features, detail, and so on. This principle tells us that reducing a message to its essential amount will make the message more psychologically powerful. There is quite a bit of research on the negative effects of irrelevant information, irrelevant detail, attention seduction, and the activation of wrong prior knowledge resulting from messages that are not reduced to their essential form (see the Handbook of Multimedia Learning for examples). Logos use this principle as do cartoons.

Similarity and Anomaly
Things that look the same get grouped together (similarity). Something that looks different from the things around it stands out (anomaly). There is a strong case for the use of consistency in design: for example, that all headers of a certain type are given equal weight by being design of equal size, color, and in the same font face. This eases the burden on processing since we can build up expectations of what something is like thus solidifying our mental model.

Continuation
The eye natural flows in the direction of a vector >. Some scientists have speculated that pointing was the first form of communication. Presently, arrows are often used to indicate direction. <- -> <-> Vectors (angles) generally show movement.

Closure
Closure is the idea that the brain is able to process a whole even if a certain amount of information has been omitted. For example, A boy stnds next to is mom. In fact, leaving out a certain amount of information is one way to stimulate the brain (it gets attention and enhances depth of processing). This is generally called the "generative principle".

Proximity
Proximity is the idea that objects that are within close physical proximity become grouped together (a unit rather than individual parts). For example, a navigation menu is a menu and not just a list of individual words. Of course, objects that are not in close proximity are considered separate.

One way to enhance proximity is through use of "common ground" (another Gestalt principle). Information is grouped if the objects are encased within another object. For example, is you put a group of words inside of a circle or a square, people will assume that those words are a unit.

Figure/Ground
Figure/ground is the idea that some information becomes visually dominant while other information becomes part of the background. Use this principle to highlight key information by making it higher in contrast, bigger, bolder, or somehow different from the information around it.

For more information about Gestalt principles in relation to design, see:

The Gestalt Principles

Scholarpedia

Gestalt Principles Applied in Design

Persuasion and Ethics

2008-08-18T11:06:00.000-04:00

People often think of persuasion as evil. If you are deliberately trying to manipulate people taking away their freedom of choice and tempting them to acts that may be outside the norm for one's community, then you must be in league with the devil herself. Right?

Well, there is a famous axiom in Communication: "One cannot not communicate". I have always found this axiom rather trite and uninspired. People do chose not to communication, to avoid communication, and to miscommunicate. However, if one is communicating, then one is also influencing the person with whom one is communicating. It is unavoidable. In other words, persuasion is unavoidable. Whether we like it or not, we cannot help influencing the people with whom we come into contact.

The goal is not to try and avoid persuading people. The goal is to chose very carefully that which we want to persuade people of. We really have to think about the consequences of the things we say and the things we do, and how we will potentially influence the people around us. Many times, the things we say and do reveal more information about us than the topics that we address. When I look at someone's Facebook profile for example, I am often amazed at the amount of information people disclose about themselves. Identity management is increasingly important as information becomes more and more ubiquitous. Yet, who is advising people on how to do this?

What issues are so important in your world that you want to persuade people to act or believe in a certain way? How about breast cancer? Wouldn't you like to see breast cancer go away? Wouldn't it be great if people got regular check ups to reduce their chances of dying from breast cancer? Do you have your pink ribbon? Is the pink ribbon really about breast cancer or is it just another marketing scam? This is not a simple issue. Framing pink ribbon products as "marketing scams" is inherently biased based on a view of marketers as evil, manipulative, money grubbers and persuasion as evil manipulation. How can breast cancer researchers obtain money? Considering that medicine is so much more an art than a science, how can we say that a product is contributing to breast cancer? Why is that we tend to view people (and corporations) who are successful, especially successful financially, as being evil? Why is breast cancer more worthy of attention than any other social/health problem?

Ultimately, any decision is a moral decision. This is what I truly believe. Religion is supposed to take care of moral training. Yet, religion is increasingly divorced from people's lives. How many people really think about the consequences of their actions? Do companies have a moral conscious? Does the government? If we want to be responsible for our actions, then we have to make conscious choices. We have to be aware of how people and things influence us. We have to change ourselves first. Then we can work on making a better world.

So, my questions for you, my friends, are 1) who are you and what do you really want out of life, 2) what is your vision for making a better world, and 3) what is your plan for making it happen?

Computers as Persuasive Technology (Captology)

2008-08-16T10:41:00.000-04:00

There is little doubt in my mind that environment and objects in the environment influence how we feel, what we think, and how we behave. One of the most interesting challenges is how to design spaces in order to increase the chances that certain events will happen. Feng shui adopts a similar belief--that we can design spaces to create different effects. For example, how can we design factories in order to increase worker safety? How can we design hospital rooms to increase patient comfort, calmness, and compliance with treatments? How can we design classrooms to stimulate student active learning?

Marshal McLuhan is famous for saying that "The medium is the message". Basically, McLuhan meant by this that media (or technologies) have profound effects on what people do, think, and/or believe. Media have affordances that either 1) enhance (what the medium amplifies or intensifies), 2) obsolesce (what the medium drives out of prominence), 3) retrieve (what the medium recovers which was previously lost), or 4) reverse (what the medium does when pushed to its limits). For example, a cell phone 1) amplifies verbal information exchange, 2) obsolesces the land line and face to face communication, 3) retrieves 24/7 communication [that was lost when people stopped living together in small groups], and 4) when pushed to its limit becomes virtual communication. Yet, cell phones are limited in the sense that they do not facilitate group interactions or collaboration of more than 2 people at the same time. They have a variety of functions (information storage and retrieval, one-to-one communication, text messaging, personal information manager, camera, video recorder, clock...). Yet, because of the design, I find myself primarily using my cell phone as a clock (since the time is so prominently displayed on the surface). I hate talking on cell phones because 1) I don't want to be available to people 24/7, 2) the sound quality varies and it annoys me when I can't hear what someone has said, and 3) I'd rather spend my time and energy doing other things.

The good people at Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab have coined the term "captology" to represent media affordances or how media are used to persuade people. Persuasion with computers occurs in several arenas: 1) commerce--selling someone something, 2) health--trying to influence people's health behaviors, 3) safety--for example providing prompts and warning messages about downloading a specific filetype or visiting a certain website, and 4) participation--click here, subscribe, update, explore... [Do take a look at the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.]

One point that the captology folks is missing is the social aspect of computing. People's behavior, attitudes, and feelings often change in response to other people's behavior, attitudes, and feelings. Recently, there is an increase of participatory websites (such as Post Secret), virtual reality sites such as Second Life, and there are even people taping into human enjoyment of games to accomplish herculean tasks (watch the human computation video). While I've never been a big fan of the monkey see, monkey do theory of human behavior, people do learn from each other and influence one another's behavior, attitudes, and feelings. Creating cooperative spaces is yet another fascinating area to explore.

I guess what personally interests me is the creation of information spaces. We know that when people are able to personalize (customize) their information spaces [such as computers--wallpaper, fonts, sizes, colors, layout...], they work more productively. But what about the information we are exposed to? How much control do we ave over the information we are exposed to? Can we create information spaces with messages that positively or negatively influence certain behaviors providing reinforcement, rewards, or other intrinsic/extrinsic benefits? Do we need to be exposed to a wide range of messages in order to open up our minds and become better people? As always... Who decides? Who decides!

Relics of a Stoneage Past

2008-08-15T12:53:00.000-04:00

I have often wondered how communication evolved among humans. It seems that nonverbal communication came first (gestures, pointing, and such). I have read (but I don't remember where) that traders used to use sign language to communication with people in other places who didn't share a verbal language. However, there is a difference between nonverbals and sign language. In fact, sign language shares many of the features of a spoken languages (a stable grammar, a stable set of signs, combinations of signs based on known rules...). Nonverbals are not fixed in grammar or meaning. They are often idiosyncratic, unconscious, and unreliable. Yet, people often rely on nonverbals to interpret a person's true intent. This is rather problematic since nonverbals are so ambiguous.

Spoken language appears to be the next significant development. Some scholars such as Chomsky and Pinker argue that language is an innate potential universal among all humans. In other words, we are born being able to learn a language (or languages), and this appears to blossom at around age 3. Of course, spoken language is highly flexible, dramatic, and expressive. The problem is that spoken language is difficult to remember (see the Humans as Generalists post). People can remember the gist of conversations, but not the details. Even the gist tends to erode over time. And so, we needed a way to record messages so that we didn't keep repeating the same mistakes all the time (reduce human error), so that we didn't need to reinvent the wheel over and over again (learn, maintain a pool of knowledge). There are several ways that we could extend the limitations of the human brain using an external representation: visuals and writing. Visual representations came first.

The first visual representations were the cave paintings. These drawings were somewhat stylized and yet still were fairly isomorphic to the things and objects they were created to represent. Most likely these paintings were used as memory enhancers (for storytelling) when instructing the young. They may also have been used for "sympathetic magic". It is clear that this method of representation has several limitations: 1) you need some skill to draw the representations (skill, learning curve), 2) you can't take the representations with you (lack of portability), and 3) it would be difficult to remember the experience over time (subject to erosion). Yet, these cave painting types of communicative interactions still exist today in the form of movie theaters, theater plays/opera, museums, and rock concerts. Put people together in an enclosed, dark space and fill it with light, sound, and images and you have reenacted a form of communication that first began over 30,000 years ago.

Visual representations transfered from rock to clay to paper thus resolving the portability problem. Unfortunately, the learning curve was still high and perhaps more importantly, visuals were difficult to put into a unified language patterns (an organized sign and symbol system). So, gradually, visual representations such as hieroglyphics and cuneiform reduced down to a more limited set of often used symbols (around 500 symbols in ancient Egyptian, around 2000 characters in modern Japanese). Finally, the Phoenicians began representing sounds instead of things and the phonetic alphabet was born. English uses 26 symbols to represent an unlimited number of words (though unfortunately spelling doesn't keep up with pronunciation). Just about anyone can learn 26 symbols (though we still spend the majority of our lives learning to read and write).

The problem now was one of distribution. First, reading and writing was restricted to certain groups: 1) nobles, 2) religious people, and 3) scribes. Scribes were highly trained (specialized). Nobles wrote laws down (and suddenly the laws became more permanent and binding). Religious people had their holy books (the word of God) and the written word was not to be questioned because suddenly the spiritual had manifested itself physically. God was no longer some unseen shadow, but was encapsulated in words in the holy book sitting right in front of people's eyes. Of course, most people couldn't read, and this tended to give power into the hands of the religious leaders (since they were able to give voice to the word of God). People in the US still tend to trust the written word. Every year millions of dollars are scammed away from people.

Of course, visuals and sounds have not disappeared. In fact, humans were able to overcome some of the earlier distribution problems with these media. Now we can get an unlimited stream of sights and sounds (CD's, videos, TV, Internet...). In fact there is perhaps too much rather than too little of these media now. The big difference between media in the 19th and 20th centuries and now is that people have much more control over the production of messages. While film making, sound production, and print were pretty much restricted to a limited group of people up to 20 years ago, now people can create their own visuals, films, music, books, art... relatively cheaply using personal computers. Unfortunately, we are not receiving much instruction on how to do this and do it wisely. People of my generation have limited skills and have been conditioned to be passive message receivers rather than active message producers. However, I hope that you will develop skills in all these media (or at least a couple of them) and consider how these media can best be used to communicate, to create a better world, and to live a happy life.

Persuasion

2008-08-13T11:44:00.000-04:00

The word "persuasion" is so common, but I wonder if people really understand what it means. Basically, persuasion is any type of observable positive or negative change in attitude, opinion, or behavior that happens from exposure to a message or set of messages. If there were a 10 point scale measuring attitudes toward abortion, and even if someone's attitude only changed from a 1 to a 2 (or a 2 to a 1) after exposure to a message about abortion, they have been persuaded. Persuasion does not have to be radical change. In fact it is highly unlikely that people will radically change their opinions, attitudes, or behaviors.

Because persuasion is positive or negative change, persuasion is subject to erosion. In other words, change can be temporary or long lasting. It's kind of like when people diet. At first, they stick to the diet earnestly. As time goes by, they begin to cheat on their diet. And eventually, they are right back where they started from (or have gained even more weight because of the erratic eating behaviors). Persuasion works pretty much the same way. At first, people have changed. Over time, they revert (more or less) back to their original state (unless something happens that keeps them heading/changing in the same direction).

As with dieting, if people are exposed to multiple messages over time, then they are more likely to maintain the state of change (and perhaps continue changing in the same direction). Places like weight watchers give their followers positive feedback for extended periods of time in order to maintain positive change. Propaganda campaigns do the same thing. The key variables here are timing of the messages: 1) how often should people be exposed to a message (or set of messages), 2) when does exposure to a message (or set of messages) become subject to the law of diminishing returns, 3) how much information is necessary, 4) how strong should the message be, and 5) what types of message (information and packaging) is most effective.

The ELM (Elaboration Likelihood Model) suggests that persuasion is deeper as elaboration on a message increases. Elaboration is really the amount of involvement with the message (for example the internal dialog people have with themselves on the message's meaning). The more elaboration people have on a message, the deeper and long lasting the persuasion. The ELM also claims that there are two sets of information that people can elaborate on: 1) the information or meaning of the message itself (the arguments, claims, and evidence called the "central route" to persuasion) and 2) the peripheral information such as the speaker's appearance, speaking skills, credibility, credentials, and other things (often called the "peripheral route" to persuasion) not related to the message meaning that people will talk to themselves about. Of course, elaboration on the message's meaning (the central cues) is more likely to result in change and to resist erosion. Unfortunately the ELM offers little help in the way of designing messages that encourage central processing.

Consider the fact that you have been exposed to certain messages from birth. One of the most conclusive findings from mass communication research is that the media tell us not what to think, but what to think about. Mass media set the public agenda. And yet, as Mark Crispin Miller author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008, The Hidden Persuaders, and Propaganda pointed out when he visited campus last year, media are trivializing the important issues. For example, the media direct our attention to such events as "Hilary Clinton cried" rather than what Ms. Clinton actually said. I often wonder what people do think about.

Anyway, if you are interested in persuasion, I'd recommend obtaining a copy of The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice.

Humans as Generalists

2008-08-12T12:19:00.000-04:00

It is apparent to me that humans are by nature generalists rather than specialists. Yet, the way our society is structured forces people to become highly specialized. Since specialization is not really natural for people, specialization induces internal tension/stress. Simply stated, people are not very happy with their lives.

Why do I believe that people are generalists? Well, first off, it has a great deal to do with how the brain works. People do not remember details, but the gist of things. For example, if you watch a movie or read a book, you cannot quote it back word for word. But, you can summarize what the book or movie was about. When you talk to someone, you can remember what they said even if you can't remember every word. It seems that our brain discards details and retains a general gestalt meaning. Walter J. Freeman, a biochemist at Berkeley, has conducted extensive research on what he calls "information packets" and how information packets travel through the brain. Information packets travel through the brain in waves, and unnecessary information is discarded. In fact, Freeman argues that the true medium of the brain is not information, but meaning. This position is echoed by Brenda Dervin in her long years of research on sense making. Dervin claims that humans are innately sense making animals who may have gaps in their information that can be overcome by building bridges to information.

If people are indeed generalists as I suspect, then people will also have some innate tolerance for ambiguity. Indeed, I have a feeling that details overload the brain, do not stimulate the brain, and do not motivate people to act. If we design messages that leave some information out, then perhaps people fill in the gaps on their own, becoming more committed to the message and its meaning. And yet, we do not want people to be misinformed. If a message is ambiguous, then it is subject to more interpretations. If people misinterpret key information, then problems could arise. How do we ensure that people will engage a message and yet not misinterpret the intended meaning of that message?

Yet again, we seem to have a Goldilocks and the three bears type of situation. Too much information overloads the brain resulting in increased error (fatigue). Too little information results in increased error (multiple interpretations). There must be an optimal amount of information to reduce error while still maintaining people's interest. This balance can only be achieved through usability testing of messages.

However, one has probably asked one's self why education is so focused on details. I wish I had an answer to this. But, let's imagine for a minute an education system based on the idea of humans as generalists. The goals in such a system would be to help train people to synthesize, to take large quantities of information from a wide range of topics and reach some general conclusions. Given information (conditions) a, b, and c, d, e, what is the optimal solution to a problem? Why do you believe this is the optimal solution? Hmmm... this sounds a great deal like the Liberal Arts approach to education. An interdisciplinary approach. And yet, the Liberal Arts approach has not been good at marketing its worth. Odd, truly odd...

Information and Meaning

2008-08-11T11:35:00.000-04:00

In THE ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO VISUAL PERCEPTION,Gibson (1979) argues that we live in a world overflowing with information. The environment is so filled with information that if we had to consciously process all of that information, it would jam (sensory overload) the brain and we wouldn't be able to perceive (or think about) anything. How then do we derive meaning from the information we are exposed to?

Several years ago, I started working on this question, and the answer I came up with is summed up in GIRM (the Generative Information Reciprocity Model). GIRM divides the human world into three parts: a perceiver, an environment (or information array) as a whole, and an environment (or information array) divided into parts. Perceivers are able to perceive parts and wholes based in part on culture (what is emphasized culturally to notice), genetics (what has been hardwired into our brains to notice in order to increase survival), and prior knowledge (what we know from experiences and learning). A whole has an information value of its own. Parts also have information values ascribed to them. The information in parts and in wholes becomes clearer, more defined, and more refined from contrasting the information in each. Contemplation of the information carried in parts and wholes increases the knowledge carried in the perceiver engendering new interpretations of the information carried in the parts and wholes. There seems to be an endless cycle of interpretation and reinterpretation; an eternal hermeneutic circle. The passage of time ensures that the perceiving organism and the world around it change, and thus that new information is always available.

Yet, what stops this endless cycle from continuing forever? Why don't people just stand around for incredibly long periods of time processing all of this information abundance? There seems to be several answers to this. First, Zipf (1949) proposed the Principle of Least Effort. The gist of this theory is that people have a natural inclination to making the least amount of effort possible and still achieve a goal. We know that people who are extraordinary--great thinkers, successful businessmen, great painters, star athletes...--go beyond least effort. Yet, only rarely are certain people motivated to make maximum effort (and this usually only in one small area).

Second and related to the first, motivation. What incentive, reason, goal... motivates someone enough to make the extra effort? Survival has become relatively easy. It's fairly easy to find a job, make and support a family, entertain one's self, get food... It doesn't seem necessary to think deeply about these things. Japan has an amazing cultural phenomenon. People there are trained from a very early age to exalt the average. People want to be average, not better than average. People are happy being average, and feel stressed out when told they are not average. Not surprisingly, Japan is also infamous for its lack of originality and creativity. Innovative? Yes! Creative? No.

So there are potentially hereditary and cultural reasons why people don't generate meaning endlessly from the information around them. The question that truly interests me is whether we can design information environments that encourage people to spend more time generating meaning/reflecting and thinking about how to make a better world. I believe it is possible, but how is a topic for another essay.

Message Tailoring

2008-08-10T10:38:00.000-04:00

Message tailoring is often used in health communication to create messages for specific types of individuals. Kreuter's (1999) Tailoring Health Messages: Customizing Communication With Computer Technology (Lea's Communication) is perhaps the best example of this approach.

The basic idea is that we must know something about the targeted population. For example, we already know that people who practice risky behaviors tend to be high sensation seekers. High sensation seekers are most highly influenced by messages that have a high sensation seeking value. Thus, if we can direct people who have a high need for sensation (by giving them a sensation seeking test) to messages that have a high sensation seeking value, then it is more likely that the message will be able to help the high sensation seeker from committing a risky behavior that could potentially have negative consequences (for example, drunk driving --> a car wreck, unprotected sex --> unwanted pregnancy/sexually transmitted disease...).

The challenge with message tailoring is knowing enough about the targeted group to be able to adequately predict the possible effects that exposure to a specific type of message are likely to have. As our society diversifies, it seems likely that the number of groups will increase. While one may argue that the range of human diversity has always been large, embracing this diversity is really something of a recent occurrence. When I was a child, there were only a couple of types of music available on the radio. Now, there are a zillion different varieties that attract subtly different types of audiences. Not only does one target types of people, but also locations where these types of people tend to congregate. The best time, place, and message design is likely to reach the largest number of people.

Yet again, if we intend to influence people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior, I hope we consider the ethical implications. Should people be allowed to make their own mistakes and learn from them, or should people be protected from them selves? How do we judge what is right or wrong for other people? Are there universal behaviors, attitudes, and/or ideas that are wrong, or harmful? Who decides? Who decides!

Message Design is NOT Art (nor Completely Science)

2008-08-08T10:49:00.000-04:00

Design has always received a bad rap. This is possibly one of the reasons why so many objects are poorly designed. The purpose of art and design are different, and yet design is often taught by artists who have been trained in a certain school of thought that is antithetical to design.

Art is an exploration of visual forms, of the range of visual expressions using certain media as well as the human imagination. The emphasis in art is on expression and testing the limits of the human imagination. At times, "art" is framed as rather lofty and pretentious. I always cringe when I hear someone define them self as an "artist" (or "actor") when they so clearly aren't. "Art" often becomes an excuse for vulgarity and trashiness.

Message design is about communication. Self-expression is often irrelevant since message designers often are not speaking in their own voices. In message design, the emphasis is on the meaning that the receiver derives from a message (rather than the act of creation). And so, message designers must know something about psychology (attention, memory, information processing, sense making...) to better understand message receivers. And, message designers need to know something about human physiology in order to better understand message reception. And, message designers need to know about speech, text, graphics, music, and film in order to better construct messages. Message designers are problem solvers. Message designers create interfaces for people to interact with each other or to interact with the environment.

Art is all about beauty, form and aesthetics. I love art. It's fun and interesting. But, I don't want my textbook to be a work of art. I don't want my TV to be artsy. Does this mean that message designers are not creative? No. They are creative problem solvers. It's more that creativity and self-expression are not top priorities of message designers. Of course aesthetics are important in design, but aesthetics are just one piece of the puzzle rather than the ultimate goal.

Of course, message design relies more heavily on scientific research than art. Message design is all about testing. Finding out about the client, about the audience, about message design strategies and their effectiveness in fulfilling the intent of the message design... I am not really sure how to evaluate art (my guess is technique in combination with some rather amorphous concept of originality???). The evaluation of message design is quite clear: how successful the message was in accomplishing its purpose. While there is never a perfect message, message designers strive for a set of universal rules for message design.

Message design is not art. It is more than art.

If you are interested in this topic, you might like to read the following:
Graphic Design as Communication.

Cropping Images

2008-08-07T12:14:00.001-04:00

When designing messages, it is important to control the amount of information that the message carries. In some ways, it is like the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. Too much information is bad potentially causing information overload, increased cognitive load, and demotivating people in making the effort to decipher the message. Too little information may also be bad because the message that is there may not have enough information to garner attention or stimulate the brain. We need just enough information, and the decision of how much information is the optimal amount can only be made through user testing.

Just as we edit text, we also edit graphics. We can subtract information from graphics (for example removing color by transforming a color image into black and white). We can also crop images to highlight key information and remove extraneous information. Often, it is better to use a drawing than a photo because the drawing allows us to have more control over the information presented. People expect photos to be exact representations and get confused if a photo has been altered to highlight key information. Drawings are expected to be abstractions, and thus people are not so surprised when drawings highlight certain information and deemphasize other information. There are also ethical considerations when manipulating photos since photos are expected to be exact replicas of the things they represent.

Take a look at the following three photos of my daughter taken by my wife with a really cheap digital camera. (Actually it is one photo that I have cropped in two different ways.) Is the information carried by each photo the same or is the meaning one can acquire from each photo somehow different?

* NOTE: The quality of the image has deteriorated with editing (this couldn't be helped because the original image was a jpeg).

1.

2.

3.

Rule of Three

2008-08-06T11:15:00.001-04:00

Messages from a Communication perspective tend to fit into certain patterns. One of these patterns is what I call the Rule of Three. Most oral and written messages have a beginning (introduction), middle (body), and end (conclusion). This is certainly true of speeches, of documents, and even of multimedia such as films. Since this pattern exists, people have built up an expectation for this pattern. If an oral or written message doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end, then it might be confusing for the message receiver.

Consider carefully what each of these sections is meant to achieve. The introduction 1) catches attention, 2) introduces the topic, and 3) primes the audience in what to listen for in the rest of the speech. The body gives the message disseminator a chance to elaborate on the topic introduced in the introduction. Finally, the conclusion summarizes points made in the body, and offers the take home message. If you apply these simple points to the design of oral and written messages, then your designs will be more effective.

But, what about graphics? Does the Rule of Three still hold true for them? I'd actually have to say that graphics are designed in a much different way. Graphics are more of a gestalt whole rather than a three part harmony. However, in an analysis of Australian women's magazines, Kress and van Leeuwen in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design(1996) find that graphics are divided into left and right and top and bottom. The left side is the old, already known, established, noncontroversial information. The right side usually carries the new, problematic, contested information. The top is the ideal (what life could be like), and the bottom is the real (what life actually is). To see some examples of these, view here: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, and Page 4. I am not sure how well this distinction between old/new and ideal/real hold true for all types of graphics. However, this distinction could help you while designing ads.

The most interesting relationship is between graphics and text. What happens when one combines the two? A concept that could help us to understand this relationship comes from Barthe and the field of semiotics. In adopting a view of meaning as social construction, Barthe (1977, also see The Language of Advertising and Image-Music-Text) was well aware that graphics are subject to a wide range of interpretations. In order to limit these interpretations, we use captions to anchor the meaning to a context. Oddly enough, graphics provide us with concrete (visual) information that makes text easier to understand. And, text is necessary to clear up the meaning of graphics. Thus, text and graphics have a symbiotic relationship. Problems occur when the text and graphic carry non-complementary information. In this case, the graphic seduces attention away from the information carried in the text (see The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning). Of course, the graphic could also activate wrong prior knowledge leading to reader confusion. One must be careful when putting text and graphics together to make sure that the information carried in the text and the graphic is mutually supportive.

Design in Different Contexts

2008-08-05T11:43:00.000-04:00

boxesandarrows: This website focuses on web design especially from an Information Architecture perspective.

The Information Architecture Institute: supports individuals and organizations specializing in the design and construction of shared information environments.

AIGA: the American Institute for Graphic Arts is the professional association for design, is the place design professionals turn to first to exchange ideas and information, participate in critical analysis and research and advance education and ethical practice.

Society for News Design: The Society for News Design encourages high standards of journalism through design. An international forum and resource for all those interested in news design, SND works to recognize excellence and strengthen visual journalism as a profession.

Poynter Online: Poynter Online has several sections relevant to news design including a sections on Design/Graphics and Photojournalism.

Instructional Design: This site is designed to provide information about instructional design principles and how they relate to teaching and learning. Instructional design, also know as instructional systems design, is the analysis of learning needs and systematic development of instruction. Instructional designers often use instructional technology or educational technology as tools for developing instruction. Instructional design models typically specify a method, that if followed will facilitate the transfer of knowledge, skills and attitude to the recipient or acquirer of the instruction. Obviously paying attention to "best practices", and innovative teaching methods will make any instructional design model more effective.

useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website: Jacob Nielsen has been around a long time. This website hosts a ton of articles he has written about usability.

Human-Computer Interaction Lab: The Human-Computer Interaction lab has a long, rich history of transforming the experience people have with new technologies. From understanding user needs, to developing and evaluating those technologies, the lab’s faculty, staff, and students have been leading the way in HCI research and teaching. We believe it is critical to understand how the needs and dreams of people can be reflected in our future technologies. To this end, the HCIL develops advanced user interfaces and design methodology. Our primary activities include collaborative research, publication and the sponsorship of open houses, workshops and symposiums.

Software Usability Research Labratory: A research based site that publishes the results of interesting usability studies (mostly web based).

E3 Insider: The Official E3 Website: features information about video games.

Video Game Design from Wikibooks: an e-book about every aspect of video game design.

International Game Developers Association: dedicated to improving developers' careers and lives through community, professional development, and advocacy.

Public Relations Society of America: The Public Relations Society of America, based in New York City, is the world's largest organization for public relations professionals. The Society has nearly 32,000 professional and student members. PRSA is organized into more than 100 Chapters nationwide, 19 Professional Interest Sections and Affinity Groups, which represent business and industry, counseling firms, independent practitioners, military, government, associations, hospitals, schools, professional services firms and nonprofit organizations.

American Advertising Federation: The American Advertising Federation (AAF), headquartered in Washington, D.C., acts as the "Unifying Voice for Advertising." The AAF is the oldest national advertising trade association, representing 50,000 professionals in the advertising industry. The AAF has a national network of 200 ad clubs located in ad communities across the country. Through its 215 college chapters, the AAF provides 6,500 advertising students with real-world case studies and recruitment connections to corporate America.

AdCouncil: The Ad Council has endeavored to improve the lives of all Americans since first creating the category of public service advertising in 1942. From our earliest efforts including "Loose Lips Sink Ships" to the more recent "I am an American," Ad Council PSAs have been raising awareness, inspiring action and saving lives for more than 65 years.

The Advertising Research Foundation: The principal mission of The ARF is to improve the practice of advertising, marketing and media research in pursuit of more effective marketing and advertising communications.

Designer's Toolbox

2008-08-04T12:31:00.004-04:00

TYPE

GRAPHICS

stock.exchange

SOFTWARE

Check on this page. This changes quickly.

Adobe CS3

Inspiration

MindMapper

Design Examples

Simplicity

2008-08-02T13:59:00.001-04:00

Perhaps the true key to good design is simplicity. Simplicity has several different meanings depending on the context of use. However, simplicity generally means removing excess sensory data, removing superfluous information, and reducing information/a message to its essential physical and conceptual form.

When I was an undergraduate, I had to read Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Each sentence was around 5 pages long, and each word seemed to be 15 syllables. The book was around 260 pages. I had no clue what the book was about, but in class the professor somehow managed to reduce the meaning of the book to one (relatively) simple sentence: when opposing ideas are exposed to each other, they tend to merge over time into the same idea, and yet people maintain the illusion that the difference still exists. The book was talking about capitalism and communism. But, I always though it was a powerful insight into the democrat and republican parties as well. I remember thinking at the time, "This book is great (more or less)! But, the design sucks!!!"

Textbooks nowadays seem to be designed with the idea of simplicity in mind. Sometimes I wonder if textbooks are unnecessarily oversimplifying though (read the end of this essay).

Educational psychologists/instructional systems designers tend to focus on the reduction of "cognitive load" through removing irrelevant information, distractions, and difficult (ambiguous, complex...) symbols (see The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning). The goal from this perspective is to remove the burden that excess places on cognitive processing so that the brain can focus on the important and more difficult ideas.

The US government has recommendations for improving public communication through the use of "plain language". Basically they advocate the simplification of government forms, not using jargon or technical terms, and not using complicated grammar. One definition of plain language is:

"Plain English is clear, straightforward expression, using only as many words as are necessary. It is language that avoids obscurity, inflated vocabulary and convoluted sentence construction. It is not baby talk, nor is it a simplified version of the English language. Writers of plain English let their audience concentrate on the message instead of being distracted by complicated language. They make sure that their audience understands the message easily." Professor Robert Eagleson, Australia

In product design, Maeda's The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) offers the following ten laws of achieving simplicity in design:

Law 1 Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
Law 2 Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
Law 3 Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
Law 4 Learn: Knowledge (experience) makes everything simpler.
Law 5 Differences: Simplicity and complexity (contrast, variety) need each other.
Law 6 Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is deﬁnitely not peripheral.
Law 7 Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
Law 8 Trust: In simplicity we trust.
Law 9 Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
Law 10 The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

Some of these laws make little sense (and seem to have little basis in research) and some of them are incredibly obvious. But as a starting point for dialog on the topic of simplicity, they will have to suffice.

Zipf's Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort (1949) argues that human behavior is governed by a principle of least effort; that people are willing to sacrifice outcome quality if a lower quality outcome is more easily obtainable than a high yielding difficult to obtain outcome. In other words, least effort is an important factor in decision making. People conduct a cost/benefits analysis before doing something, and the action that requires the least effort with the highest possible gain is chosen. If an action that potentially yields higher gain is available, it will not be chosen if it requires more effort. It would seem that if something seems simpler, it would be perceived as requiring less effort and thus will be chosen as a course of action.

In Communication science in relation to the processing of mediated messages, Annie Lang (2000) proposes that the human brain is a limited capacity information processor. First, the brain is only able to attend to a limited number of stimuli. Thus, attention is selective and first focuses on what is easily perceived, what appears relevant, what has been primed, and that which is novel. Second, memory is limited (generally, it is believed that working memory can handle 3 (+ or - 2) bits of info at a time, or 4 chunks). We can extend memory by writing things down or graphically representing them. I sometimes wonder what we gain and what we lose by doing so. Still, it is clear that the brain has some defined limits in relation to attention and memory, and thus meaning generation. Since the brain is limited in what it can simultaneously perceive and remember, there is a limit on the meaning that can be derived from a representation (message or message set). The message designer's goals are thus to:

1) Reduce a design into its simplest form to compensate for limits of brain hardwiring,
2) Direct attention to the most important information,
2) Ensure that information is not distracting, irrelevant, or overly complicated.
3) Attract attention.
4) Facilitate memory.
5) Facilitate meaning making.
6) Test how successful the design has been in meeting 1-5.

Yet, I also believe that learning is primarily a result of effort. Sometimes, designs/messages need to be more complex and ambiguous in order to stimulate mental engagement. People like puzzles. People like solving problems. People are natural born sense makers. The intent is key here in making decisions about message complexity. For messages in which people have to make quick decisions, simplicity is best. For messages that are not so immediate, more complexity and ambiguity are appropriate. Think about going to the art museum. I have marveled at some really complex paintings. I spent about 15 minutes looking at a Picasso painting at MOMA once. (I average about 10 seconds per painting.) On the other hand, the "line on the wall" type art bored me. Of course art is not the same as message design. The intent is completely different (as will be addressed in a future essay).

Take a look at this new search engine: Cuil. Now look at this search engine: Yahoo. Which is the better design? Who would benefit from one design or the other? How would you change either design based on the idea of simplicity/complexity?

ISO 13407: Human Centered Design

2008-08-01T11:23:00.001-04:00

The purpose of message design is really to communicate meaning to someone whether that someone is one’s self or some targeted group of individuals. In order to best convey an intended meaning, a designer has to have answers to several key questions:

Who are the recipients of the message?
What assumptions can you make about the recipients’ ability to construct meaning from the message?
What elements can you incorporate into the design to best enable recipient comprehension of the intended meaning?
How effective were these design elements in enabling user comprehension?

ISO 13407: the human-centered design process was created in 1999 in order to help designers answer these fundamental questions using a standard process. ISO 13407 recommends 4 steps in integrating stakeholders into the design process:

Specifying the Context of Use,
Specifying User Requirements,
Creating the Design Solution,
Evaluating Designs in Use.

A human centered approach has long been advocated by Donald Norman in his books: The Design of Everyday Things, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things,and The Design of Future Things: Author of The Design of Everyday Things. These books have seriously influenced my thinking about design, and have made me a better designer.

Specifying the Context of Use

The first phase of the human-centered design process is the planning phase in which one should:

Specify the intent (what the intended meaning or goal of you or your client in providing this message/set of messages is).
Identify the target audience of the message, often called “the stakeholders”.
Determine the characteristics of the audience. Where would people most likely want to see the message (context such as from home, school, work…)? What benefits could audience members receive from exposure to the message (entertainment, shopping info, education, awareness, health benefits, financial gain…)?

Ask a sample of the target population the questions from 2) and 3) above directly using either one-on-one interviews or focus group discussions. Surveys and questionnaires are also possible, but direct communication is better (more revealing/informative).

Keywords: goals, stakeholders, location, timing

Specifying User Requirements

The second phase of the human-centered design process is analysis. What prior knowledge, priming, sensitization, information, physical abilities… do people need to have in order to make sense of your message? What prior knowledge do we have about persuasion, about message design techniques, about designing messages to this particular audience? What individual differences do these people possess (high in risk taking or whatever)? What attracts these people’s attention? What motivates them? What media do they commonly use? What do these people think they want or need to be happy, healthy, and successful?

Create user profiles (identifying the traits of the typical audience member) and perform a task analysis (in which you identify people’s routine actions as relevant to the message).

Keywords: literature review, user profile, analysis, information gathering

Creating the Design Solution

In this third phase of the human-centered design process, a prototype or mock-up version of the design is created based on the data of the first two phases. This phase includes:

creating a storyboard (organization/concept),
creating labels/keywords (attention/focus),
designing copy, graphics, other media (conceptual design),
creating mock-ups/a trial version for user testing (physical design),
creating the final version of the message,
pinpointing locations/times for message dissemination (message dissemination strategy).

Make sure to include feedback mechanisms to ensure that users still have a voice/connection to the message even after the message has been disseminated.

Keywords: concept, mock-up, feedback, implementation

Evaluating Designs in Use

After the message has been disseminated in phase 3, users still need to have a voice in determining the effectiveness of the design. There are several measures that can be taken such as:

user satisfaction with the message and the media, location, timing used to disseminate it,
changes in user attitudes, intentions, or behavior (increase in sales, increase in favorable or negative opinions…)
suggestions for improvement.

Mechanisms for enabling user voice should be included in the design in phase three. Decisions to alter the message, media, location, timing… should be made based on user feedback for as long as the message stays in circulation.

Keywords: feedback, evaluation, revision

Side Note

If you find the human centered design approach interesting, you may also be interested in Participatory Communication. I was fortunate enough to work with Dr. Chike Anyaegbunam at the University of Kentucky who specializes in this approach. Do a google search, and see what you think.

Message Design Variables

2008-07-31T11:25:00.006-04:00

The following is a list of possible message design variables. As you can see from viewing this list, message design requires quite a few decisions. I believe that while each individual factor is important, the gestalt is the most important.

Message Design: Possible Variables of Interest
Factors	Physical Aspects	Conceptual Aspects
Shape	Size (height, width, length) Type (circle, square, triangle) Amount (one – many) Layout (focus) Figure/Ground (primary, secondary, tertiary) Arrows (directionality)	Complexity (meaning) Clarity (recall) Organization (attention, recall) Flow (meaning) Ordering (sequence, meaning)
Color	Contrast (light, dark) Combinations (complementary, analogous) Amount (one – many)	Symbolism (meaning) Highlighting (attention) Mood (emotional processing)
Text	Size (height, width, length) Color (see COLOR above) Spacing (line, letter, word…) Variety (consistency) Font (serif vs. sans-serif) Amount (little – much) Text Boxes (location) As Graphics	Readability (meaning) Complexity (meaning) Clarity (recall) Organization (attention, recall) Flow (meaning) Symbolism (meaning) Highlighting (attention) Organizers (previews, summaries)
Graphics	Shape (location, use of figure and ground) Size (height, width, length) Color (see COLOR above) Type (photo, drawing) Amount (few – many) Content (amount) Sequencing (order) Placement	Readability (meaning) Complexity (meaning) Clarity (recall) Organization (attention, recall) Flow (meaning) Symbolism (meaning) Highlighting (attention) Organizers (previews, summaries) Relevance (content, supports text) Recognition Value (attention, recall)
Evidence	Text (account) vs. Graphic (representation) Amount (how much?) Type (appeals, arguments, stats, stories…)	Testimony vs. Statistics Type (expert, anecdotal, research, experience) Credibility (person, message, evidence) Processing & Persuasion (relevance)
People	Gender (male?/female?) Ethnicity Age Intelligence (IQ’s, learning styles, cognitive complexity…) Sensation Seeking (high/low) Need for Cognition (high/low) Abilities (physical, disabilities, color blindness, mobility…) Motivation (intrinsic, extrinsic) Impulsivity (high/low) Need for Stress (high/low) Previous Knowledge (high/low)	Attention Memory Sense-making Behavioral intentions Attitude change Behavioral modification Behavioral change Depth of processing
Media	Affordances (behaviors, processing, emotional reactions) Accessibility (fee vs. free, searchability…) Speed of Dissemination (real time, asynchronous) Interactivity Sensory Data (see, touch, smell, hear, taste) Speed of Delivery (fast, medium, slow)	Attention Memory Sense-making Behavioral intentions Attitude change Behavioral modification Behavioral change Depth of processing
Context	Health Work Religion Education Politics Entertainment No. of People (intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, network, mass)	Attention Memory Sense-making Behavioral intentions Attitude change Behavioral modification Behavioral change Depth of processing
Content	Type of message (persuasive, informative, personal, tailored…) Aesthetics vs. Pragmatics	Attention Memory Sense-making Behavioral intentions Attitude change Behavioral modification Behavioral change Depth of processing
Language	Native/nonnative Formal/casual 1^st person/3^rd person Vividness (imagery) Ambiguity/Concreteness Metaphors Analogies	Attention Memory Sense-making Behavioral intentions Attitude change Behavioral modification Behavioral change Depth of processing
Symbols	Complexity Familiarity Abstraction/Concreteness Sequencing Culture	Attention Memory Sense-making Behavioral intentions Attitude change Behavioral modification Behavioral change Depth of processing

Message Design as Story Telling

2008-07-30T11:21:00.002-04:00

Ultimately, message designers are storytellers. When you are designing a website, a speech, a print layout, or any other type of message/set of messages, you have to keep in mind the principles of good storytelling. What does it mean to be a good storyteller? Read this: Advice on telling a good story, Donald Norman's Design as Communication, and From design to meaning: a whole new way of presenting? based on Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Think about stories you've heard. What is memorable? What got your attention? What was a good story, perhaps a story you'd like to tell others?

A good story to me relates to my life, and teaches or makes me aware of something that helps me in some way. Whenever I am feeling really tired, I read one of The Dune Collection from the 6-book set: Dune; Dune Messiah; Children of Dune; God Emperor of Dune; Heretics of Dune, or Chapterhouse Dune. These books energize me because I can relate well to the characters, their noble cause, and the forgiveness of the flaws that make us human. I remember that my life is guided by a larger principle; a principle that transcends the trivia of everyday life.

The point I am trying to make is that if the story is not important and relevant to someone, then that person is not likely to spend time hearing, reading, and/or watching the story. Content is key, and no matter how well something is packaged, if the content is not worthy then the story will not reach a mass audience.

Consider storytelling as persuasion. Read this: The Six Stories You Need to Know How to Tell. Do you agree with the author that you have to establish your credibility because there are so many scams out there and people have become jaded? Do you agree that storytelling is the ultimate persuasive tool?

The Internet has opened up new opportunities for creative storytelling. Website design is now "Experience Design". People spend an average of 8 seconds when deciding whether to stay or leave a website. Can people understand your story well enough in 8 seconds to decide to stay and learn more, buy your product, subscribe to your blog, hire your services? Can you create a significant user experience in 8 seconds so that people have enough motivation, interest, stimulation, and awareness of possible benefits to stay and interact more?

One new storytelling form online is Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). For example, Six to Start has created an ARG that is attracting people's attention. This type of game is likely to proliferate as people turn to the Internet more and more for entertainment and as media converge. If you were to tell a story online, how could you utilize the unique features of the Internet to create a more interactive, challenging, novel, exciting, well told story?

Finally, storytelling is an interface, a starting point. What we really want is to develop relationships with people. When creating a story, you have to keep the audience in mind. However, let's not forget that the audience has some responsibility also. Communication is not a one-way street. Communication requires at least 2 people interacting. While with tradition media such as print media, movies, tv, and radio, the audience seems to have no voice or no presence in the communication, with the Internet the interaction between message designer and message recipient is almost immediate and expected. Why not get the audience to participate in the design of the story? Watch this video: Human Computation about how to get the audeince to work for you.

Message Design and Ethics

2008-07-29T11:48:00.001-04:00

In my last post, I argued that message design is intentional (consciously planned, with intended consequences). I would like to make sure that the point is really clear. Message design relies on persuasion. Persuasion is a double edged sword. It is impossible not to influence someone through exposing them to messages/information. Ideally, we can control the consequences of that exposure by testing to see what works with what group of people within what context under what possible conditions. The consequences can be either positive or negative (and therein lies the double edge since we often do not know whether the consequences will be positive or negative). The point I'd like to make in this essay is that message design requires consideration of ethics.

Ethics is associated with professionalism, moral integrity, honesty, and basic humanness. Most professions have some code of ethics that its members aspire to follow (see Codes of Ethics Online). Message design also requires a code of ethics. I hope that people will only design messages in which they truly believe. Even this statement doesn't seem to be enough.

How do we judge what is right or wrong for other people? Most people assume that what is right or wrong for themselves transfers to all other people. This attitude is particularly prevalent among religious groups. Yet, many times the criteria for establishing what is right or wrong is somewhat arbitrary (having been derived in a different historical and/or cultural context). From a more legalistic perspective, as long as an act doesn't have negative consequences upon another person, then it is OK to do. Yet, even this is somewhat arbitrary since it is often difficult to define what is a "negative consequence" and it may be difficult to assign cause to one action.

The questions which message designers need to address in regards to ethics are:

Message Design as Intent

2008-07-28T13:39:00.000-04:00

I guess the most important aspect of message design is the purpose for which you are designing the message. The key questions are: 1) what are you really hoping to accomplish and 2) what is the optimal way to get the desired results. This essay addresses the first question, which really has to do with intent. What kind of intentions can people have with messages?

The traditional distinction in message intents is between informational messages and messages that are designed to persuade. If you look at common public speaking textbooks such as Lucas' The Art of Public Speaking, this distinction is quite common. And yet, this distinction has often seemed arbitrary to me. I don't think there is a message that isn't inherently persuasive. But, maybe that depends on the definition of persuasion.

So what is persuasion? I think persuasion is any positive or negative change in attitude, feeling, belief, knowledge, understanding, and/or behavior (see The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice). The key word here is "change". While changes occur naturally as a part of aging, as a part of history, and as experience increases, persuasion from a message design sense is changes resulting from exposure to a message or a set of messages. In other words, from exposure to a specific message or set of messages, there is some observable change in attitude, opinion, or behavior that is different (faster, deeper, more resistant to change...) from naturally occurring change.

If people are given information (which is selected, organized, and disseminated with some purpose in mind), then there is a chance that changes will occur in that person's attitudes, beliefs, opinions, feelings, or behavior. Thus, information is just as persuasive as an other message type, and informing someone of something is a persuasive act. Traditionally, the distinction made between informative and persuasive messages is that the intent of informative messages is to be "objective" and the point of persuasive messages is to take a stance. Informative messages are: objective, fair, balanced, multi-sided, lacking in emotional appeals, and so on. Persuasive messages are: biased, one sided, use emotional appeals, and so on. This distinction seems arbitrary to me and more indicative of a stylistic difference than an intrinsic message type difference.

Informative messages have somewhat "hidden" agendas. Information is selected from a nearly infinite range of possible information. Since this selection process is generally hidden under the guise of "objectivity", very little rationale is provided for why or how this information has been selected. The assumption is that the information is somehow relevant (see Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory or Relevance: Communication and Cognition) to the audience. Yet, who is making this initial decision about the relevance of an informative message on behalf of the audience?

Yet, it is undeniable that information has the potential to positive or negatively affect people's attitudes, feeling, opinions, beliefs, and/or behavior. The assumption that information that is biased, one sided, and loaded with emotional appeals is more persuasive than information that is objective, fair, and balanced seems unfounded.

Basically message design as intent means that we as message designers need to spell out what our goals and objectives are first, and then design messages that will most likely meet those goals and objectives. We need to measure the effects of our message designs and search for effective design principles both universal and context specific. And, we need to make these processes public through publishing the results of our research.

Evidence Based Design

2008-07-27T12:05:00.003-04:00

As an academic, I am required to approach my area of specialization (message design) systematically and to provide evidence to support any claims made about the efficacy of different techniques and message design strategies. I have been invested in this topic for quite some time now, and yet I have never really found much research that tells me what I want to know about message design. Generally, the recommendations are so vague as to be useless. For example, strive for clarity. "Clarity" means what exactly? Of course, clarity is important except when it is better to be more ambiguous. Spitzberg (1998), author of The Dark Side of Interpersonal Communication, wrote a funny article called the "Myths of Effective Communication" in which he clearly states that every commonsense assumption about effective communication is flawed because there are times when it is more appropriate to do the opposite. In other words, "clarity" is important sometimes, and ambiguity is important sometimes too. Ideally, we test messages before we disseminate them on a larger scale to see what strategy is effective within a given set of conditions (among a certain group of people, within a certain domain or context, and/or in consideration of certain constraints).

The point I am trying to make here is that we need a systematic and rigorous methodology (set of procedures) for testing designs. Perhaps we can borrow from other such efforts such as:

Evidence based design among architects in the design of health environments

Evidence based web design

Four levels of evidence based practice

Evidence based medicine

Why is evidence so important? Well, human beings are inherently flawed. Not only do human beings have physical limitations/hardwiring that predispose us to interpret stimuli in a certain way, there are also neuropsychological functions hardwired into our brains that affect our perceptions, interpretations, and subsequent behaviors. Michael Bach provides us with 78 of the ways in which our eyes deceive us. Indeed, we cannot completely trust our senses as our senses tend to deceive us. Evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker author of one of my favorite books, How the Mind Works, say this is a survival mechanism. Basically the argument goes that we are hardwired to react to certain stimuli in set ways in order to maximize the chances of survival. Danger signals, for example, tend to bypass conscious processing. People tend to jerk in one direction when startled (though there is not necessarily any evidence of danger, and perhaps our senses are fooling us, though our hardwiring basically says that it is better to be safe than sorry). So, we can't completely trust our senses, and we have developed certain procedures for overcoming the fallibility of our senses (the scientific method comes to mind).

Perhaps the fallibility of human reasoning skills is even more worrisome. Gilovich (1991) has written a fascinating book that documents how people accept things as being true in even in face of hard evidence to the contrary.

Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn't so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press.

Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn't so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press.

Gilovich's Homepage: http://www.psych.cornell.edu/people/Faculty/tdg1.html

The following is from a review of Gilovich's work written by Nathaniel Bluedom (2003).

I will talk more about evidence based design later. For now, the above provides a rationale for why evidence based design is necessary. The next key questions are: 1) what kinds of evidence and 2) how do get this evidence. Read this article from Norman (2001) to see what he says: Applying the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social Sciences to Products.

Redefining Design

2008-07-26T18:38:00.002-04:00

It's been a long time since I last touched this Blog. Basically, we had a child and I got my PHD and started a new job. But, life is settling down and I am ready to tackle this project again.

I am really excited because I will be teaching a new course this fall in Information Design. One of the things I plan to do is to work extensively on this Blog with and without the aid of my students.

The question that is always lurking in the back of mind is: What really is design? I think the key to good design is that good design is not accidental. Design then is a conscious effort at improving processes and products. As a conscious effort, design is limited by what we know. In that sense, design shares much in common with Strategic Communication. Taking implicit processes and making them explicit so that one can improve on them, and then making them implicit again. The more aware we are of the consequences of design, perhaps the more effective our designs will become. So the key questions from this perspective are really:

How do we reduce human error through design?

Human error includes:

Attention (making people aware that something exists or is available)

Memory (helping people to store processes in memory, overcoming the
limits of the brain as a limited capacity processor)

Sense-making (helping people understand)

What affordances do different media provide us?

Different media compensate and enhance human physical and mental limitations.

How do we match media with messages?

What are the truly important design factors?

The old "form" vs. "function" debate. Why can't we have both?

Culture, genetics, physical ability, mental ability, prior knowledge,
physical message design features, conceptual message design features?

Of course we have yet to specify the implicit processes, and I often wonder if there is transfer between contexts. In other words, if we learn the best way to design messages in one context, do those message design principles hold true in other contexts? While I hope the answer is yes, it seems that there is very little evidence to support either side. One of my own personal goals is to contribute to this evidence.

What is Design?

2006-11-16T15:21:00.002-05:00

What is design? A quick search using Google's define feature (Define:Design) shows that design includes planning, intending, having a purpose, and/or creating in the mind or conceptualizing on paper. Design can include both products and processes and is relevant to a wide variety of contexts such as communication, engineering, research, advertising, education, systems, art, and architecture. Fields that adopt design as one of their basic functions include:

systems design
instructional systems design
information systems design
message design
graphic design
web design
product design
process design
interior design
jewellry design
information design
research design

Considering the importance of design to such a wide range of applications, one would expect that a science of design would be highly developed. However, this is not the case. This blog accepts as its mission statement: to create a space in which designers and other interested parties can meet in order to develop a clear research agenda to establish the science of design by first negotiating the relevant constructs, building off of prior research and research traditions, and discussing the implications for design practice.

Universal Principles of Design

2006-11-15T08:18:00.003-05:00

For this first post, I've selected Universal Principles of Design. This book provides an excellent survey of design principles that beginning~advanced designers can view in order to get a feel for problems one is likely to encounter in design as well as possible solutions. Simply put, this book contains an amazing amount of information about a wide variety of topics of interest to designers. Some of these topics include:

the 80/20 rule

aesthetic usability

advanced graphic organizers

color theory

Fitt's law

Gestalt principles of organization

The really useful thing about this book is that it not only provides an explanation of each design principle with examples, but also provides the sources of the ideas and some research findings.