Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design
1997, Paul Mijksenaar
Paul Mijksenaar’s Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design is a useful reference book that offers examples of good and bad design.
Similar to the examples in Don Norman’s classic, The Design of Everyday Things, I find several of the examples of bad design to be humorous when I read about them, but would be frustrated in the actual occurrence of the event. Like the example of the car cigarette lighter being thrown out the window because the passenger’s mental model was a disposable match vs a reusable lighter. It makes me giggle because I can imagine the event in terms of all of the other ‘retro’ design elements from that era. The example, however, brings up many of the fundamental challenges that information designers still face today of balancing complexity and simplicity.
“Too little information (or no information) is also too much information: it takes up space and wastes human energy.” — Mijkensaar, Paul
The book also emphasized the crucial need to “think about how the user will understand the design” but also notes that new designs are “often resisted and evaluated poorly until their positive aspects are understood and widely adopted.”
Mijkensaar also gives examples and discusses the pros and cons of Maps vs. Diagrams:
“Geographic maps have the advantage of being true to scale — great for walking. Diagrams have the advantage of being easily imaged and remembered, often true to a non-pedestrian experience, and the ability to open up congestion, reduce empty space, and use real estate efficiently. Hybrids — “mapograms”? — often have the disadvantages of both map and diagram with none of the corresponding advantages.”
