English: Over the past few decades information design has been in transition—moving from the creation of mainly paper-based communications to today’s mix of paper and electronic artifacts. Information designers’ repertoire must now include visual and verbal strategies for the Web. This shift in media compels us to ask what reading looks like in an electronic environment and to reconsider how people might engage with our content. To design effective electronic communications requires not only good writing and visual design but also an understanding of reading on the Web.

Early research about reading online was limited to how the technology itself influenced what people do, in particular, with how the size of computer screens and the poor legibility of typography constrained reading. While the influence of technology on reading is important—even crucial—especially as we move from designing for large computer screens to the small screens of mobile phones, technology is not the most important consideration in thinking about effective online information design.

Excellence in online information design involves anticipating how people may engage with Web content—cognitively, emotionally, and culturally. Excellence also calls on us to be responsive to people’s expanding purposes for reading online—purposes such as retrieving information, learning new subject matter, making decisions, sharing information, or having fun. By understanding reading online, information designers can make writing and visual design choices that are more rhetorically appropriate.

This presentation will sketch our evolving conceptions of reading on the Web. It examines the empirical literature about reading online with a focus on how reading has changed between 1980 and 2010. To support this analysis, I profile some typical purposes for reading online and suggest what these purposes imply for designing content and for supporting the human relationships that we intend to enable. I also point to research about how effective writing and visual design can help people understand, remember, and appreciate online content while creating human relationships and enabling actions.

Information designers take as a truism that stakeholders shape their work in fundamental ways. But what does it mean to take stakeholders seriously? How can we take appropriate rhetorical action unless we understand how people might engage with our content? This talk will illustrate how our increased understanding of the diversity among readers and their many purposes for online engagement are changing ideas about the nature of information design.

Slovensko: Zadnjih nekaj let je bilo informacijsko oblikovanje v procesu prehajanja od ustvarjanja predvsem na papirju zasnovanih komunikacij k današnji mešanici papirnatih in elektronskih stvaritev. Toda repertoar informacijskega oblikovalca mora zdaj vključevati tudi vizualne in verbalne strategije za svetovni splet. Ta premik na področju medijev nas pripelje do vprašanja, kakšno je branje v elektronskem okolju, in do razmisleka, kakšen odnos ljudje vzpostavijo do naše vsebine. Oblikovanje učinkovitih elektronskih komunikacij zahteva ne samo dobro pisanje in vizualno oblikovanje, temveč tudi razumevanje branja svetovnega spleta.

Prve raziskave internetnega branja so bile omejene na to, kako tehnologija vpliva na dejanja ljudi, in še zlasti na to, kako velikost računalniškega zaslona in slabša berljivost tipografije ovirata branje. Čeprav je vpliv tehnologije na branje pomemben – celo ključen – še zlasti ko naredimo korak stran od oblikovanja za velike računalniške zaslone k majhnim zaslonom prenosnih telefonov, pa tehnologija pri razmišljanju o učinkovitosti spletnega informacijskega oblikovanja ni najpomembnejši vidik.

Odlično spletno informacijsko oblikovanje predvideva, kako bodo ljudje pristopili k spletni vsebini – kognitivno, čustveno in kulturno. Upoštevati je treba tudi vse številnejše razloge, zakaj ljudje berejo na internetu (pridobivanje informacij, spoznavanje novih tem, odločanje, posredovanje informacij ali zabava). Oblikovalci, ki razumejo internetno branje, lahko sprejemajo retorično ustreznejše pisne in vizualne oblikovalske odločitve.

Predavateljica bo orisala naše razvijajoče se pojmovanje spletnega branja. Sledil bo pregled empirične literature o internetnem branju s posebnim poudarkom na tem, kako se je branje spremenilo od leta 1980 do 2010. Analizo bo podprla z nekaterimi tipičnimi primeri razlogov za internetno branje in pokazala, kako ti razlogi vplivajo na oblikovanje vsebine in podpiranje človeških odnosov, ki jih nameravamo omogočiti. Opozorila bo tudi na raziskave o tem, kako učinkovito pisno in vizualno oblikovanje ljudem pomaga razumeti, si zapomniti in ceniti spletne vsebine ter hkrati vzpostavi človeške odnose in omogoča dejanja.

Za informacijske oblikovalce je samoumevno, da zainteresirane stranke pomembno oblikujejo njihovo delo. Toda, kaj pomeni imeti resen odnos do zainteresiranih strank? Kako lahko ustrezno retorično ukrepamo, če ne razumemo, kako lahko ljudje pristopijo k naši vsebini? V tem predavanju bo predavateljica opisala, kako vse večje razumevanje raznolikosti bralcev in njihovih številnih razlogov za dostopanje do interneta spreminjajo pojmovanje narave informacijskega oblikovanja.