What is Informational/Instructional Design?

Information Design is the visual representation, look and feel of subject matter, designed for the sole purpose of being displayed in the most cohesive form possible. This can take the form of graphs, illustrations, charts, diagrams or any other graphic representation of information. Instructional Design is the creation of visual tools in order to aid in the learning process, making the absorption of such information as easy as possible. Together Informational/Instructional Design, put simply is the visual appearance of information created with an instructional nature in the most readable and most understandable manner possible.

Instructional/Informational Design refers to the way in which information is displayed, its quality and most importantly its readability. Information/Instructional Design not only comes in the form of graphs, images and charts but also signage. The most important aspect of Informational/Instructional Design is what the end user gets out of it, the designer must always represent the subject matter with the end user in mind, the designer must not only ask, ‘what does the user need to know.’ (Form an informational design point of view). But also how will they go about receiving that information (Instructional point of view).

The Global Development Research Centre. “An Introduction to Instructional Design.”
2009. Accessed 10 March 2009. <http://www.gdrc.org/info-design/instruct/intro.html>

OnlineLearning.com. “What is Information Design?” Ohio University. ND. Accessed
11 March 2009. < http://www.online-learning.com/course_id_2.html>

Culatta, Richard. “Instructional Design.” 2009. Accessed 11 March 2009.
<http://www.instructionaldesign.org/>