User-Centered Design - Read More
 

INFORMATION DESIGN

Passini, Romedi. "Information Design: An Old Hag in Fashionable Clothes?" in Information Design, edited by Robert Jacobson, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1999, pp. 83-98.

Passini explains how wayfinding, an architectural concept, helps users navigate dense or complex information.  He explores the commonalities among physical and textual, imagery, and other virtual environments.

Tufte, Edward R.  For more than 15 years, Edward R. Tufte, who teaches information design at Yale, has educated people who want to explain the world visually to others.  His three classic books are:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983)   (the "pictures of numbers" book)

Called the Strunk & White of visual design, this volume focuses on charts and graphs that display numerical information.  It virtually defined the field.

Envisioning Information (1990)  (the "pictures of nouns" book)

A remarkable range of examples of visual thinking, explores similar territory but with an emphasis on maps and cartography

Visual Explanations (1997)   (the "pictures of verbs" book)

Tufte's most recent volume centers on dynamic data--information that changes over time.

INFORMATION SEEKING BEHAVIOR

Kuhlthau, Carol Collier.  Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services,  Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1993.

Prof.Kuhlthau, Rutgers University, has identified six stages students go through in seeking information, as well as the emotional reactions to each stage of the information seeking process.  This is a helpful orientation toward learners that is often overlooked.