Information Design
The Complicated Art and Science of Naming Tropical Storms and Hurricanes
© Ugur Akinci I never thought naming hurricanes was a complicated business. I originally thought Atlantic storms were given male names and Pacific storms female ones. Period. Boy, was I wrong. Nothing is that simple in life, is it? My naïveté starts with the assumption that these are all “storms.” Nope. It’s a “tropical storm”…
Read MoreUsing Color in Designing Learning Modules
(Excerpts) Studies have shown that the use of color can greatly impact learning and retention. There is evidence to suggest that thoughtfully designing the color of your learning courses will be time well spent. In a study by the Poynter Institute, participants were shown two newspaper pages. The pages were identical in every way except…
Read MoreMake Sure your Images Broadcast the Right Message about you & your business
A web site must reflect the correct image about you and your business with its design, color pallet, content, and also the IMAGES used. Sometimes I’m surprised how careless some web site owners are in the message they are broadcasting with the images they choose. Here is the web site of a writing service. I…
Read MoreUse Case and the Importance of Storytelling in Technical Documentation
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Software and hardware developers are well-educated intelligent engineers who usually have no difficulty at all in creating products. The real difficulty in product development is not the question of “how” (as in “how can we build this?”) but “what” (as in “what shall this product do?”). Just like in screenwriting, the…
Read MoreInformation Design – FIFA 2010 World Soccer Cup MatchCast
FIFA did a great job in designing its MatchCast web site where you can follow ongoing matches in real time. There’s no video or sound but an excellent minute-by-minute play-by-play, with ample stats and information for your enjoyment. The four tabs at the top of the screen do a great job in sharing such “meta…
Read MoreInformation Design — NPR's "Obama Tracker" vs. a Plain Table
© 2010 Ugur Akinci Sometimes information design takes off in directions mostly because we have the tools; mostly because “yes, we can!” However, whether such a design is an improvement over the good’old plain table is a topic open to discussion. Here is one such design illustrating President Obama’s most important policy initiatives since the…
Read MoreAn Introduction to Scenario-Based eLearning Courses
A scenario-based eLearning course is an instructional design where learners are given a hypothetical situation that they have to solve or deal with. The learner is then guided through the process of solving the problem by a facilitator or instructor who is playing the role of the protagonist in that particular situation. Scenario-based eLearning courses…
Read MoreHow to Create a Patient Information Form with Acrobat 9
An excellent step-by-step tutorial on how to create forms in healthcare industry by using Adobe Acrobat. (Excerpts) I’m frustrated with paper-based Patient Information Form Process. The frustration is fresh on my mind since I ran into the same problem today trying to schedule an appointment for my son today. My son is in school at…
Read MoreWhen the Form Does not Fit the Content – A Classical Information Design Problem
FORM and CONTENT are two wings of the same bird. When one of them fail, the bird does not fly — or flies in circles.To make sure the two fit one another perfectly is a very old problem and challenge in information design and marketing. Sometimes the challenge is met through resorting to “genres.” Genres…
Read MoreWriting an eBook? Consider These 4 Powerful Evergreen Topics
No matter how much information there is out on the internet on a particular topic there are always people looking for more. You only need to take a look at industries like health & fitness, or personal development to get a picture of what is selling. Every week new information is created on these topics…
Read More