Chapter 4, Designing Information

Important lessons learned throughout the readings

1) Importance of Hierarchy, while layering and ordering information it is critical that the individual organizes in a way that list the information from greater importance and ending with the information that isn't as sufficient or important.

2) Importance of Proximity, group together topics, ideas, themes with one other. According to proximity individuals will group together ideas that are shown and shared next to each other and will disassociate items that are listed further away from each other.

Chapter 4

proximity describes grouping with careful spacing both horizontally and vertically with the careful use of aiding communication. An example is a museum of art spacing the exhibits far apart. Hierarchy gives a sense of importance by starting bottom up or top to bottom. The design becomes clear and eligible with importance. An example is a prescription description. Organization forms the framework for communication compromised of text and graphics to include information that is clearly eligible for the reader. Without organization, information becomes cluttered and unreadable.

Organization, Proximity and Hierarchy

Organization, proximity, and hierarchy are centered around how lists, menus, tables of contents, and other categories of information are grouped and placed on a page in order for the text or groups of text to be displayed in the most efficient way. Katz states that in any arrangement of text or groups of text, there is a figure and ground, positive and negative, information and empty space [and] how that information and that empty space is configured makes it easier or more difficult to see relationships and to understand the information.

Ch. 4 Designing Information

Proximity—If two things are close together in proximity, we associate them with each other. Things farther away are considered separate.

Organization— Easy to understand, appropriate use of space (negative and positive), little ambiguity, but also taking into consideration aesthetics.

Hierarchy— Logical ordering of information- from most important to least important.

Reading Response

Organization & proximity: placing like items together in a graphic with appropriate spacing (not too much, not too little)
Hierarchy: the order in which the information is presented (logically, in order of importance)

Example:
http://payroll.intuit.com/sbweb_payroll/category/understanding_w2/images...

Today is Tax day! Nothing says "poor design" like a form that most people have to pay someone to complete for them!

Chapter 4 Designing Information

Organization: is defined as something that is made up into a specific function and is distributed into a whole. It can be seen as a use for putting things together in a neatly order so that the user can interrupted what the distribution theme is.

Proximity: Being close to something or near a certain thing; being close together. Information designers put this term into effect when they put images, words, graphs, etc.. close to each other on the page to portray a certain visual effect for the audience they are focusing in on.

ch 4 response

Organization is just the use of the space on the page. It's how you place things on the page and how that effects the consumer. Placing things so that it is put in a meaningful location to either draw the eye, or give the eye a break with blank space.

Proximity is the arrangement of the images or text in correspondence to the rest of the page. Kind of going hand in hand with organization, proximity however focusses on the area more or less around the items on the page as opposed to their actual placement.

W--Chapter 4 RR

Organization: The organization determines what information is displayed, emphasis (or not) on certain types of information, and how this information is formatted within the framework of the piece. The organization also determines how the information is utilized.

Katz Chapter 4 Response

Katz uses grids, tax forms, sports scores, prescription drug leaflets, voting ballots, and other documents to demonstrate both correct and incorrect examples of organization, proximity, and hierarchy. Much of the discussion here echoes the ideas put forth in Kress and Van Leeuwen's chapter, "The Meaning of Composition" from their book Reading Images. Katz explains the concept of organization as providing structure to information so the user can intuitively and quickly grasp the meaning of the graphic.

Chapter 4 response

Structure: The parameters for placement of information, ideally aiding in information comprehension.

Organization: Organization is the use of space, both positive and negative, to place information in ways that are most beneficial to information comprehension. The act of structuring.

Hierarchy: The act of classifying a group of things so that the most important things are kept together in one place and the last important things are kept in another. In information design, typically the most important information comes first, with less necessary information coming later.

reading response