Defining information design

TCANZ have provided some useful definitions of information design, in the Issue 11, April 2007 edition of their Southern Communicator journal.

I was re-reading some old articles and found this good definition of information design by Greg Pendlebury and Janice Leong. The journal is for members only, so have reproduced it here.

Information design = Users + Content + Design

Information design is a discipline that focuses on communication design where the information is needed to support a user in some action, decisionmaking or process. It is a collaborative process of research, writing, design and testing.

They also provide a good definition of an information designer:

Information designers are content developers that may have a background in writing or in graphic design or in user research. They work across all of these areas in solving communication problems. Information designers work to understand the users, the context and the information required. Information designers strive to be advocates for the users.

They certainly do.