The Challenge of Designing Meaningful Information

Information designers are not only tasked with the challenge of designing information for large groups of people with different socio-cultural backgrounds, ages, education levels, and genders. They must also ensure that the information they design is in alignment with expectations regarding what the aim of the information should be. However, information design is about more than spreading information in digestible form to a large group of people. It's also about getting involved in product and service developments, with the aim of making the products and system usable. In this chapter, we aim to problematize information as something that is built on signs and risks ambiguity, depending on the context, situation, and the perceiver, where perception is viewed as an active process. Furthermore, we argue that the perception of meaning and the meaning-making of information is crucial for its impact. So, the challenge for information designers and information design research is to framewhat should be communicated, why, andhow the information should be designed in order to communicate it in a way that will be perceived as meaningful.