I recently attended an intriguing event called Design Meets Business, sponsored by business bookseller 800CEORead (which is located here in Milwaukee). The event got me thinking about the business impact of design, particularly as it relates to interactive design and marketing.

Typically, most such discussions focus on how design creates branding. The lesson is usually bad design makes a bad impression on potential customers. Certainly, this is a important aspect of design, but there is another aspect of the discussion that I think warrants attention: the idea that design creates meaning in business.

Before the invention of the Web, people have been discussing the idea of the information society and knowledge workers. Within this discussion, came concerns about information anxiety--the idea that we are confronted with a gap between data and knowledge and we suffer as a result.

The danger is only exacerbated by the emergence of the Web, which first was a Murky Way of information and then added a cacophony of voices to the mix in "Web 2.0". How we find/create meaning among this sea of data is subject of much discussion (Glut, Everything is Miscellaneous, Wikinomics, Made to Stick, Cult of the Amateur).

Design plays a key role in this world. One might argue that Google's simplified interface was just as important as it's savvy search algorithm for the company's emergence as a market leader. This in a field that was crowded with competitors at the time of Google's launch.

Not everyone is trying to create the next great search engine, however. Most organizations are simply try to make sense of all this information--on the web, in databases, reports, analysis and so forth. The ability to make sense of information, to understand what you know and what you do not know, is critical to success. At least one economist has noted that the ability for an organization to manage uncertainty is the number one distinction that separates things that succeed from those that fail.

Here is where design can help. Information design (and its subset of data visualization) is a specialty of growing importance. Essentially, the idea is that how you present data is more than aesthetics; it is how you create meaning. It is the transformation of data into information.

Information design is sometimes derided as nothing more than charts and graphs. Certainly, an effective use of charts, graphs and maps can facilitate understanding. However, there is more to it than that. Information design can and should offer perspective and context. This can take shape as either a recurring presentation of the information in the same form, which allows users to identify patterns and make decisions based off their experience.

More effective is information design that builds perspective and context into the visuals. Perhaps this is historical perspective, peer comparisons, or an identification of the level of uncertainty.

Some of the best examples are interactive information design, pieces that allow not only offer visual data with perspective, but also allow the user to adjust settings and witness variations over time. Witness examples any time at the New York Times interactive section.

As the amount of information grows (and more and more voices join the conversation), it becomes even more critical to separate signal from noise, to create meaning from chaos.

In such an environment, information design will play a critical role in determining the survival of the fittest.

This entry was posted by Tom Pionek, on Saturday, March 1, 2008. You can leave your response.