Designing Information: Human Factors and Common Sense in Information Design

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Joel Katz

John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2012, English

Nonfiction, Graphic Design

9.4 x 7.6 inches, hardcover, 224 pages

ISBN: 781118341971

Suggested Retail Price: $55.00

From the Publisher. Designing Information shows designers in all fields—from user-interface design to architecture and engineering—how to design complex data and information for meaning, relevance, and clarity. Written by a worldwide authority on the visualization of complex information, this full-color, heavily illustrated guide provides real-life problems and examples as well as hypothetical and historical examples, demonstrating the conceptual and pragmatic aspects of human factors-driven information design. Both successful and failed design examples are included to help readers understand the principles under discussion.

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Richard Saul Wurman

On Richard Saul Wurman’s Notable Books of 2012 list

I began working with Joel Katz 40 years ago. We learned from observing each other, which allowed us to discover maps that lead to understanding. This volume is just that. The journey from not knowing to knowing is from ignorance to understanding, from complexity to clarification. This book was done by one of the few who have mastered what I used to call “information architecture,” and what I perhaps should have called “understanding architecture.” The book itself is a diagram of clarification, containing hundreds of examples of work by those who favor the communication of information over style and academic postulation—and those who don’t. Many blurbs such as this are written without a thorough reading of the book. Not so in this case. I read it and loved it.

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