Information design has become a very inclusive discipline. Authoring has
to consider a wide amount of disciplines and variables in order to be valid. Today, more than never before, design has to look directly to the user and how it interacts with products, systems, and methods. The interaction user-design is empowering and improves efficiency. The infographic, as the main manifestation of information design, urgently requires user testing and audience analysis.

SOME CONTEXT AND HISTORY OF INFORMATION DESIGN
It is said that the first manifestations of information design dates from the Paleolithic, when humans started to paint on caves, in order to tell stories and keep records of rituals or other group activities. The need to commu-nicate, through pictorial figures, colors, and lines, characterizes the most basic understanding of our intelligence and logic, supporting that most of the information enters through our eyes.

After this, the urge of humans to keep records and tell others about their findings marked the beginning of maps, the quintessential manifestation of information design. Its original design, which aesthetic qualities still prevail, responded to the fundamental way humans understand their geographic context, marking the beginning of visual story telling.

Later on, icons and symbols to keep records in farms and households and to visualize journeys, reaffirmed this idea. Mainly during the Renaissance, astronomers, statisticians and politicians started to produce documents and utilize graphics to keep track of their discoveries and to share them with their peers. Pictograms and sketches characterized most of the scientific notebooks of the era. Some centuries later, during the 20th century, many semioticians, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, Umberto Eco, and Roland Barthes, added more complexity to the discipline, including semiotic analysis and persuasion theory into the formal study of communication processes, and therefore, information design.

Including theory of communication in the study of information design has been one of the most important advances in the matter. Basically understanding how the mind works, what are the elements of persuasion and communication, and how they can be applied into culture studies and demography, is the kind of knowledge that designers should have.

USER-CENTERED INFOGRAPHY
In the last years, the main manifestation of information design seems to be the infographic, also called diagram. This representation of information (regardless if it is 2D or 3D, or if it is interactive or not), which is intended to visualize complex information easier, quickly, and clearly, has grown enormously with the expansion of internet, social media, and communication technology. There has been an increasing number of companies offering the services of information design, along with art schools providing specializations on information architecture.

This new approach opens the opportunity for interdisciplinarity and creativity. It offers new possibilities for the traditional exercise of design,or more specifically, for graphic design. It goes beyond the limitations of the computer or the paper; it takes advantage of new materials, new mediums, and new social responsibilities.

Unfortunately, the social aspect still seem to be absent in many levels of the information design activity and most infographics. According to designer and typographer Erik Spiekermann, “most designers are

conditioned to regarding the design of information as something that is somehow beneath them; they’d rather be left alone to design posters, logos and glossy brochures.”¹ Therefore, the question is, can information designers afford to stay in their own professional context to explore information, and limit their reach to the basics of graphic design in order to succeed? The answer will be no. Culture, and more specifically, people (the user), have to be included in the activity, when the top priority is not simply addressing the content of the information.

In this sense, Erik Spiekermann, considers that “when the design of information is left to chance the result is information anxiety. And when things become too complex, when an environment defies common sense, when technical requirements are allowed to prevail over human consi-derations, then someone has to intervene.”² Thus, it is imperative for the discipline of information design to reconsider its reach, its results, and the way it is taught to the new generations. Information design and infographics are not decorations of existing information; they are tools to empower people with the access to information, which means that infographics (as the main manifestation of contemporary information design) should reconsider their audiences and user testing as relevant as the size of the graphics or the color of the typography they will use.

Let this essay be a plea for user testing to become an essential activity in the infographic design processes. User-centered design applied in information design couldn’t be more adequate. David Sless, Director of the Communication Research Institute, thinks that engaging people is like keeping a conversation that is “attractive, socially appropriate, physically appropriate, respectful to them, credible, that contains information that is accessible and usable.”³ Therefore, design research and design thinking principles, along with other research disciplines and practices, such as ethnography, psychology and visual anthropology, are amazing methods to get closer to the user, to the audience, to understand their context, needs, and expectations. Consequently, the inclusion of specific audience research practices to the information design activities will result in more effective and efficient design, which can actually simplify the processes and reduce costs during their development, being usually the result of either excessive or inaccurate prototyping, or fast solutions that needed to be reconsidered after been published.

Information designers have to be aware of the importance of user-centered design. It is not enough to suggest quetions and answers on how to simplify a piece of information without taking into account the audience and the final user. Information design is not decoration, is visual practicality put into culture.

1 Erik Spiekermann, “Information Design”, Professional Association of Design,
(June 21, 2002), accessed on October 5th and 10th, 2010.
2 Erik Spiekermann, “Information Design”, Professional Association of Design, (June 21, 2002), accessed on October 5th and 10th, 2010.
3 David Sless, “Measuring information design”, Information Design Journal 16(3) (2008): 251.
4 David Sless, “Measuring information design”, Information Design Journal 16(3) (2008): 252.

RESOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

• David Sless, “Measuring Information Design”, Information Design Journal 16(3) (2008): 250-258.
• Weidong Huang, et al, “Measuring effectiveness of graph visualization: A cognitive load perspective”, Information Visualization Journal Vol.8 (2009): 139-152.
• Anita Wright, “The Value of Usability Testing in Document Design”, The Bulletin Journal (1994): 48-51.
• Michael Hassett, “Teaching the Rhetoric of Document Design”, Business Communica-tion Quarterly (1996): 65-67.
• Paula Stiff, “Some documents for a history of information design”, Information Design Journal 13(3) (2005): 216-228.