Information design

Information design is about how information is represented and described for its organisation, computation, and presentation. This ultimately aids in its interpretation and understandibility, either by humans or computer systems.

Information design is the foundation that all systems managing information must have built well for them. Information design and the architectural products created (e.g. taxonomies, metadata, BCS / fileplans) affects all types and scales of system, from websites and Intranets, to corporate EDRMS, to libraries, to an organisation's entire information environment – its enterprise information architecture.

Often, information design is the missing ingredient in many information systems projects, which usually manifests itself all too obviously to users and KIM / IT departments alike.

Bad or missing information design leads to unusable websites, Intranets, EDRMS, collaboration systems, that are hard for users to navigate and search across. It also leads to a lack of strategic vision and joined-up thinking across the business's information assets and ultimately to unsustainable systems that are inflexible or not easily extended or integrated with other systems.

TFPL helps clients with information design

TFPL have worked over two decades with all sorts of clients on projects requiring information design consultancy, including everything from strategy to implementation, including:

  • Records management projects requiring fileplans, business classification systems, and metadata profiles;
  • Information management projects requiring enterprise taxonomies;
  • Content management projects requiring metadata profiles and controlled vocabularies;
  • Website and intranet projects requiring usable navigation, controlled vocabularies, metadata profiles and usability analyses;
  • Collaboration (SharePoint) projects requiring content types and site-plan as well as a host of other information architecture products.

If you have any enquiries, please contact TFPL Consultancy at consultancy@tfpl.com.