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Top-down design in cognitive studies means that readers will attempt to
use what comes first in the text to make sense of whatever follows. This
phenomenon suggests that informative headings are important, as well as
presenting the gist of the text quite early on. Some empirical studies of
top-down and bottom-up processing (where the main ideas come after the
details) show that often good readers can handle the lack of organising
information as they read, but that this really throws poorer readers.
All this could be culture-specific as well. There's some informal
evidence that Japanese techical manuals, for example, are arranged in a
bottom-up style, mainly because there are different expectations about
the readers' role. However, a colleague of mine who teaches in Japan
tells the story of a Japanese engineering student who preferred the
English-lang. textbook because of its logical organisation, despite
having to read it in a foreign lang.
