Information shapes the way people perceive and interact with the world around them. As technology expands to all aspects of society, the quantity and complexity of information will continue creating newer and bigger information problems, from disorganization to miscommunication and, ultimately, confusion.
Information Experience Design (IXD) is the process of shaping how people engage with information, in both digital and non-digital forms, to ensure that the information is meaningful, accurate, timely, and formatted appropriately. More directly, it is the combination of principles and practices needed to design:
- information tools: virtual and analog tools through which people interact with information,
- information services: social and organizational systems that connect people with information, and
- information spaces: physical and digital spaces that present and/or allow interaction with various types of information.
IXD is informed by several related fields, including Information Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Architecture, Usability, and User Experience Design. Most importantly, IXD takes an empathetic, human-centered approach to designing useful, usable, and desirable information systems through an iterative 4-step process:
- Research: understand the problem and learn about the users and their contexts.
- Creation: sketch to brainstorm ideas and make increasingly more developed prototypes to model the best concepts.
- Assessment: evaluate the ideas regularly and measure whether they are meeting the needs/goals of the intended users.
- Execution: strategize how to make the concept a reality and plan with regard to organizational and cultural constraints.
In sum, IXD combines two areas of Pratt Institute’s rich legacy – design and information science – because we feel they are the key to unlocking solutions to the complex challenges we face in the 21st century.