Analyzing A Local Shopping Mall

For this final Blog, I was tasked with going to, and analyzing the information displays at, a local public space. I chose a local shopping mall that originally started off as two separate malls, but an extension was built between them, merging them into a single mall.

Signage

The signage for this mall was done in two different styles. There was the older section style which included posting some of the directions to certain stores on high walls.



And the newer style which listed only the major “Anchor” stores in plain view over other visual distractions.



In fact the newer connecting piece offers very little in the way of general information, just widely spaced “You are here” maps with two other billboards attached to each. These maps are colour coded showing different sections of the mall, and all the vendors are listed alphabetically, with their ID number printed in the colour of the section they reside in.



Wayfinding in this section of this mall is sometimes very difficult to people unfamiliar with the mall, as the foliage in the middle of the main corridor is tall enough, and the kiosks being at an angle to allow passers-by to see more of their wares, obscure many of the store marquees on the far side of the hallways, making the visitor need to move either along the hall or through the middle to find their bearings, or the store that they seek.

Visual Information

As I said, the maps are spaced fairly far apart in the newer portion of the mall. There is a QR code on these maps that take the user to a website to download an app that serves as a directory. (I did not bother to download the app, I know my way around that mall.) If someone new were to use the map to identify the location of the vendor they desire, there is very little in the way of directions to indicate which direction down the corridor to move towards their goals. Anyone with a poor sense of direction would be at a disadvantage. Personally I would suggest either bands of colour along the floor or overhead, each leading to the correspondingly coloured section of the map.

The Triangular shape of the map stands, (sorry no photo) is easily missed in the newer section of the mall as the foliage is quite dense, and again taller than the mapstands themselves. The ads that accompany the maps display PSAs for the most part, and there are no cardboard bulletins in the Food Court to list any up-coming events or festivities. So there are not a lot of non-vendor displays to evaluate.

In the older section on the east end of the mall, the blue and brown sections of the map, the public exits are numbered for customers to identify which door they entered through. The same is true of the west side older construction, though there are less in the way of public doorways. Most people enter through one of the major stores, all of which have external and mall side exits.

Quality of Exhibits/Displays, and Contextual Information

The vendors of the mall that are regular storefronts all have small freestanding signs that serve as advertisements for passers-by to see from a distance, there are few large displays that are not designed by larger national chain marketing groups. These displays are all professional grade marketing materials, each designed to capture the interest of their target audience. Judicious use of colours, large fonts, and glamorous photography or graphical artistry abound, and can be experienced in just about any major shopping center.

Each shop has their own target audience and relies on their corporate headquarters to make all marketing decisions.

Overall Design

I find the overall design of the whole mall to be somewhat disjointed. On either side you have the older construction, with wider more starkly decorated corridors and a cold sterile feel to them, connected together by a much newer, skylight lit section with rich foliage and warmer feel. This tends to give the visitor something of a transporting experience when going from one to the other. Even the transition points give the visitor a specific impression of moving from the sterile insides to a more open air venue or the other way around.



This being said, it’s not like it would have been cost effective to refurbish the existing malls to match the newer connecting construction, but the resulting layout has a rather “Patched Together” ambiance. Going from one end of the mall to the other often feels as if you were on a spaceship, and needed to move through the Hydroponics Bay to get from Engineering to the Bridge. While this is interesting, it hardly conveys continuity or consistency throughout the facility.

Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 tool that I use for this blog: WordPress

With my ability to program PHP and SQL, I could very easily have created my own blog on my own domain (www.pendalhaven.com) However, why should I reinvent the wheel? Just to show that I can? Many people have this ability, so what makes me so special that I should go through all that trouble? Nothing.

Why WordPress?

WordPress is a very successful Content Management System that is available for free over the internet. It has many capabilities and features that while I could design my own for exercise of my programming skills, would take me far too long to actually construct, troubleshoot, and implement.

Feature Set

Some of those features are the widgets, or small modules that offer many extended capabilities through plugins, of which WordPress has a database of over 18,000 for their clients to choose from. I have noticed that many of my classmates that use the same WordPress tool that I do, have availed themselves to some of those plugins and widgets, as exhibited by their side-bar content.

The built in themes with their ability to be customized help those that either don’t have the time or inclination to construct one out of sheer cloth. This feature also allows those who wish to show off their abilities by posting themes for others to use as well.

Another good feature about WordPress, is that it is available as either a hosted blog community or you can download it and install to your own server for more control. Depending on what you’re looking to do with a blog, WordPress is a good tool to use. If you just need a way to voice your opinions about the world, or have a very specific and defined purpose to your blog, WordPress is very adaptable, allowing you to mold the look to suit your task.

My Preferences

For myself, I prefer a cleaner, more simple look and function with my blog, so I do not use many, if any, of the widgets for WordPress, though I did take one of their available themes and customized it for myself. As for the obvious evidence of my use of WordPress….. You’re here aren’t you?

Information Design Tools

Tools of the Trade

Information design has, as a formal discipline, not been in existence as long as other ‘design’ disciplines. That doesn’t mean there are no tools for practitioner to use. Most, if not all the tools for Graphic Design, Copy Design, Web Design, etc… are also the tools of Information Design. Some are physical tools such as software programs, rulers, photo tables, etc.. some are mental tools such as Dan Roams Visual Thinking Toolkit, (Roam, 2009)

or Yvonne Hansen’s Graphic Tools for thinking (Jacobson, 2000).

In any Information Design project (such as these blogs), there should be a liberal smattering of all applicable tools, but only those tools that ARE needed.

For example, in the construction of this blog, I use a productivity suite program (Open Office) which includes a word processor, a spreadsheet (unused in the creation of this blog) a presentation application (also unused) a drawing application, and a database management application (unused for this blog).

I do also own licensed versions of other, more advanced and tightly focused tools, such as Adobe’s Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash programs. In fact I used Photoshop to create the background image used by the blog. However, the simple nature of this blog does not require the use of any tools other than my word processor, and my own opinion and commentary. Some may criticize the simplicity of this, but someone once said (I believe the quote is credited to Albert Einstein) “God always takes the simplest way.” Why not learn from the Head Cheese themselves?

Roam, D. (2009) The Back of the Napkin, Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, Expanded Edition Penguin New York, NY.

Jacobson, R. (2000) Information Design Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA.

Project Information Design Process

Information Design Process
This sections readings were about the processes that could/should be used during projects to facilitate clarity of expectations and help to define the content or product of the project itself. A product of a project can be an information system, a pamphlet to disperse information on a particular subject, a web site, or any number of other possibilities.

The steps of the process include the creation of several documents to lay the foundations for the design parameters for the project that are shared with all the stakeholders of the project and receive written approvals by those stakeholders that hold controlling positions on the project, such as the client and upper management of the team performing the project.

Research and Initial Documents

These documents, in suggested order of composition, are the Creative Brief, a high level document born out of the research into the client and problem/need that the client is looking to resolve. The creative brief outlines the basics of the project, including an explanation/description of the client, an explanation of the project, the goals of the project, and some of the logistics of the project. This document is intended to be shared with the client, to help clarify and align the expectations of both them and the project team. Through refining this document with client input and feedback, the chances of a misinterpretation of what was expected to be produced, and what is being produced by the project are drastically reduced. Having the client sign off on this document will ensure that they understand and agree to what the team is expecting to produce, and that they agree that it meets the needs that drove the creation of the project.

The next step in the described process is also part of the research phase of the project. It is to take the accepted goals or description of the problem and to create personas of the users of the product of the project. A persona is defined as “One of the types of people that will use the product of the project”. Once all the personas have been identified and prioritized (which type of user are the more important in hierarchical structure) then a series of scenarios should be created to fully examine how those personas will actually use with the product. The purpose of this step is to try to uncover all the requirements that the product should meet, and to make sure that the product is able to be properly and easily used.

Mechanical and Structural Documents

The next few documents to be produced pertain to the mechanics of the product, including information/work flow, structure, and layout. The flow is covered by a flowchart or process map for the project. In this level, the scope is broad enough to determine how the users will move through the product (either by subject presented, the order that web pages progress, or by physical actions in using the system) without establishing any of the actual linkage between the sections of the project.

The next document would be the blueprint of the project, which will lay out rudimentary design choices such as colour choices, element placement, and many other design elements. This wireframe blueprint should have some similarity to the final product, without cementing any details that may or may not be possible. It should allow the team to get a better visual impression of what the final product will be like, and be malleable enough to be able to change should the need arise.

These type of documents will help designers by supplying a consistent resource to reference throughout the project. This helps to prevent disconnects between team members and avoids the need to repeat whole tasks to correct any issues that would be caused by different team elements working to different expectations or interpretations.

In all phases of development, there is the need to test the designs to ensure functionality, and that the whole is cohesive and consistent. This testing can be done in small increments during the development (Unit Testing) but the final product should be put through a thorough Verification and Validation testing cycle to ensure that fixing one small thing late in the project does not break an earlier fix.
Application of Process
As for how I use this process, either currently or in the future, for this blog. Aside from using an outline to organize my thoughts and fleshing it out to be the actual blog posting, I don’t and probably won’t. There is no need to construct a detailed list of personas of who will be reading my posts. That list is limited to two, other members of the course that this blog is part of, and other. Priority lies solely on the former group. As for scenarios, testing, and visual design, that was covered at the inception of this blog when I decided on the look/feel and tested it’s appearance on four different web browsers (Opera, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari). There is no need for any other documentation, short of the actual blog posts themselves, and those will be developed per my outline to post method.

Constructing blog posts from a human centered approach

Blogs today are created for a variety of reasons, whether to enhance your customer’s experience with your company by putting a more human presence on the web for them to encounter, or to establish yourself as an authority on some topic, or just to offer a window into your life and allow others to relate to you on a more humane level.

 

I am normally not a big consumer of blogs, I do not frequent blog sites nor do I follow any other social networking services. As such, I find that I appreciate those blogs that are laid out with me, the reader, in mind. I appreciate blogs that have a purpose, even if it’s to tell a story, and stick to that premise as much as possible. I do not appreciate, and normally do not finish, reading missives that allow their subject to wander, touching on several topics but focusing on none. As such, I have decided to adopt a more Human Centered Design for my blog, making my posts on topic, purposeful, and pertinent so as to facilitate my readers ability to find what information I put in them.

There are some good and bad aspects to adopting the HCD approach. This following list is by no means all inclusive, but I believe it hits those that are especially pertinent to my use of the approach.

Pros:

It facilitates reading my blog. I can present ideas and information quickly without wasting the readers time with extraneous verbosity.

It shows an understanding of the needs of the readers, and accounts for them as much as possible.

Regardless of the technology used to reach the blog, it remains very similar and equally easy to access.

Cons:

It’s very focused to the other members of my class, possibly to the exclusion of other readers.

It’s nearly impossible to write to the satisfaction of all readers, so it will reflect a more narrow viewpoint on the topics and subjects that are presented.

This blog will be exclusively used for this course in my college education, and will not be used for personal exploration or to wax poetic on the nature of man, society, sociology, or any other aspect of the human condition. Through the life of this blog, I shall endeavor to keep the experience of the reader in mind while constructing my blog posts. Keeping those posts as on topic, clear, concise, and correct as possible.

What is Information Design

Information Design is the ability to filter through lots of data and or even a single complex piece of information, and distill it down to present it in the most effective manner, or a manner in which to evoke an expected response. This skill, or discipline, is very useful, if not essential in many forms of communication, be it web sites, forms, questionnaires, reports, or even articles and novels. One of the important things to remember is that not all information to be communicated need be factual or heavily researched. Granted, researching the topic of the communication is always helpful, but in the case of writing novels, screenplays, or other forms of entertainments, determining the order in which to lay out scenes, passages, and how to present the information therein is also a form of Information Design.

 

Take, for an example, the movie “Psycho”. The writers and director had to plan out how they were going to subtly expose the clues and events of the plot without spoiling the reveal that Norman Bates was actually acting the part of his mother. They also had to determine when to reveal that piece of information to get their desired effect. In effect, they had to take the information of the plot points and design how to best present them for the desired effect.

 

Another example would be the fact that I belong to an online community along with a dear friend of over eighteen years. This past weekend, I was put in the position of having to announce to said community that my friend was taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of her ovaries, stomach, liver, and intestinal tract. This was a big surprise as there was NO indication. I needed to craft the announcement to convey not only the fact that she was sick, but she wasn’t getting better in a way that carried the suddenness and shock that I felt was appropriate for the news. I’m still not certain I did the situation justice, I do not believe I had the necessary skill to convey the information as effectively as I wished.  This is another area where my study of Information Design could have served me.

So to me, Information Design is a valuable tool to be used in a variety of situations, and is used commonly, though not all practitioners realize that they are employing it.