Information design

Information design is the process of conveying salient information to the end-user in as effective a way as possible, given the task at hand and the limitations of the medium being used.

This activity is used to design structured information such as tables or large lists. Reference information originally portrayed by text can be accompanied or replaced by icons. Colour, position and size can be used to convey groupings, meaning and to aid readability.

Example 1: OED Online recent searches

This example is from the 2005 project to redesign OED Online for the Oxford University Press.

Up to ten recent searches are summarised at the bottom of the OED Online 'Advanced search' form. The summary contains links which allow a visitor to:

repopulate the relevant form with the search inputs, or
rerun the search.

In the original design, the two links were presented within a sentence.

In the redesign, we converted the information to a table with column headings. The first two 'searches' columns include the search name and the link to repopulate the search form. The last two 'results' columns include the number of results and a link to repeat the search.

Read the case study for this project.

Example 2: OED Online date chart

This is an example from 1999 during the original design of OED Online.

Entries in the OED include quotations which illustrate word usage over time; the earliest written quotation and the spread of quotations are of interest to scholars.

Extract from "alphabet, n" Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 15 Dec 2002. <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00006447>

1580 BARET Alv. A., This common vsuall order in our Alphabet or crosrowe. 1611 COTGR., (R.) Touching the French abece, for alphabet I will not call it, according to the vulgar error, that word being peculiar only to the Greek tongue [not in ed. 1632]. 1751 JOHNSON Rambler No. 141 P.8 The lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of his alphabet. 1781 COWPER Convers. 11 As alphabets in ivory employ, Hour after hour, the yet unlettered boy. 1857 MAX MÜLLER Chips (1880) I. x. 261 The Chinese alphabet was never intended to represent the sound of words.

An early prototype of OED 2 included a tabular summary of quotation dates and we were asked to explore an alternative presentation of the information. The column labels were in the form "To 1599". For each quotation, just the years were listed below.

To 1099	To 1199	To 1299	To 1399	To 1499	To 1599	To 1699	To 1799	To 1899	To 1999
					1580	1611	1751 1781	1857

Before: the date chart from "alphabet, n" used in the online prototype of OED 2

We simplified the column headings by changing them from the form of "To 1699" to "1700", and we swapped the column headings with the quotation years. The quotation years were then stacked as in a histogram. Visual clutter was further reduced by removing the background colours. The resulting date chart design is still used by OED Online.

					1580	1611	1781 1751	1857

After: the date chart from "alphabet, n" used in OED Online

Read more about our consultancy work for Oxford University Press.

Information design

Example 1: OED Online recent searches

Example 2: OED Online date chart

Relevant Internet projects

Relevant non-Internet projects