Doc Design Research Results (Long)

[Dan Lupo <Dan_Lupo -at- CCMAIL -dot- US -dot- DELL -dot- COM>]

     Many thanks to all those who provided citations and suggestions
     relating to document design research.  Here is what I received, in no
     particular order and with some overlap (but I wanted to recognize
     everyone who was thoughtful enough to email me).

     --Dan Lupo
     ==================================================================

     Karen Shriver did a piece on the history of doc design several years
     ago in Technical Communition (the STC journal). You might look at the
     first chapter of my diss, and the bib. I talk quite a bit about doc
     design up to 1990. Also, look at Ginny Redish's stuff. Particularly
     the article in Odell and Goswami's Writing in Nonacademic Settings.
     Hope this helps.

     --Bob Johnson
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     Benson, Philippa J.  "Writing Visually: Design Considerations in
     Technical Publications."  *Technical Communication* 32 (1985): 35-39.

     Keyes, Elizabeth.  "Typography, Color, and Information Structure."
     *Technical Communication* 40.4 (1993): 638-54.

     Schriver, Karen.  "Document Design from 1980 to 1989: The Challenges
     That Remain."  *Technical Communication*  36 (1989): 316-331.

     *Technical Communication* is the journal for the Society of Technical
     Communication.  It is an excellent--and current--resource.

     Also check *IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication*--within
     the past 2-3 years there's been articles on the use of color in
     document design (Wm. Horton and others...)

     Betsy Smith
     Auburn University
     smitheo -at- mail -dot- auburn -dot- edu
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     Karen Schriver has a bibliographic essay, entitled something like
     "Document Design, 1980-90: A Review of the Research". It was published
     in the STC publication, Technical Communication, November 1989.

     Alexander (Sandy) Friedlander
     Associate Professor
     Director, Programs in Technical and Science Communication
     Drexel University
     Philadelphia,  PA 19104,   USA
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     The stuff up through 93 is in the last edition of my textbook's
     chapter on Designing documents (Business and Administrative
     Communicaiton, Irwin, 3/e--see the notes).  I'll be updating the last
     three years of research this summer when I start revising.

     Kitty Locker
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     There is much that has been done in the 20th century that is relevant
     to your questions about document design, some of it as early as 1908
     when Huey said that understanding what people do as they read would
     require detailing some of the ~most intricate workings of the human
     mind." Document design is all the things you mention and more. There
     are many sources that tell us about the nature of document design and
     that provide empirical support for the design moves you mention (as
     well as other ways that document designers can make contact with
     readers~ thoughts, feelings, and motivations as they engage with prose
     and graphics). But as you discovered, the research is fragmented,
     scattered here and there, and it has not been integrated from the
     perspective of how prose and graphics work together. I review some of
     the relevant research in a ten year period between 1980 and 1989 in
     the article mentioned by other kind folks on this list; that review
     picks up where the AIR collection (by Felker et al., 1980, also
     mentioned earlier) left off. I have a book that is coming out around
     November of this year with John Wiley & Sons, Dynamics in Document
     Design: Creating Texts for Readers. There is a rumor that it came out
     in 1995, but since I have an inside source, I can tell you from the
     horse~s mouth that it is coming :)

     Karen Schriver
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     You might get some good information from the folks on the Information
     Design listservs.  I don't have all the subscription information, but
     there are several listservs in the Info-D 'family'.  The ones I have
     handy are:

     InfoDesign-Cafe subscription instructions:
        Send mail to <majordomo -at- fwi -dot- uva -dot- nl>, saying "(un)subscribe
        InfoDesign-Cafe".

                and

        InfoGraphics instructions:
        IN ORDER TO:         SEND MAIL TO:                SAYING:
        (un)subscribe      majordomo -at- fwi -dot- uva -dot- nl     (un)subscribe InfoGraphics
        contact moderator     yuri -at- fwi -dot- uva -dot- nl         <questions and comments>
        submit a message   InfoGraphics -at- fwi -dot- uva -dot- nl   <your message to the list>

     Hope this helps.
     Kat Nagel      MasterWork Consulting Services, Rochester, NY
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     There is an article in the April, 1994 issue of Ergonomics in Design
     about this.  It is entitled "Using Text Labels to Aid Selective
     Reading" and was authored by Charles T. Gilreath.

     In case you can't get your hands on that, below are a couple of
     references from that article.  Also, one of the sharpest people I know
     in terms of understanding of documentation design/typography issues is
     Joel Angiolillo at AT&T.  You might want to send your message to him
     at:

     jsab -at- arch4 -dot- att -dot- com

     Some references from the EID article:

     Gilreath, C. T. (1993). Graphic cueing of text: The typographic and
     diagraphic dimensions. Visible Language, 27, 336-361.

     Hartley, J. (1985). Designing instructional text (2nd ed.). London:
     Kogan Page.

     Spencer, H., Reynolds, L., and Coe, B. (1975). Spatial and
     typorgraphic coding with bibliographical entries. Programmed Learning
     and Educational Technology, 12(2), 95-101.

     White, J. V. (1988). Graphic design for the electronic age. New York:
     Watson-Guptill.

     Finally, I would suggest you look at Patricia Wright's work.  She has
     a chapter entitled "Issues of Content and Presentation in Document
     Design," in the Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, edited by
     Martin Helander (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1990).  It has about six
     pages of references - a few of which I've listed below.

     Felker, D., Pickering, F., Charrow, V. R., Holland, . M., and Fedish,
     J. C. (1981). Guidelines for Document Designers.  Washington, DC:
     American Institutes for Research.

     Hartley, J., and Trueman, M. (1985).  A research strategy for text
     designers: The role of headings.  Insturctional Science, 14, 99-155.

     Waller, R. H. W. (1982).  Text as diagram: Using typography to improve
     access and understanding. In D H. Jonassen (Ed.), The Technology of
     Text, 1 (Chapter 7, pp. 137-166). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational
     Technology Publications.

     Wright, P. (1980). Usability: The criterion for designing written
     information. In P. A. Kolers, M. E. Wrolstad, and H. Bouma (Eds.),
     Processing of Visual Language, 2 (Chapter 13, pp. 183-206). New York:
     Plenum.

     Daryle Gardner-Bonneau
     bonneau -at- kcms -dot- msu -dot- edu
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     Dan, look at Clay Felker's _Guidelines for Document Designers_ from
     the Document Design Center of the American Institutes for Research.
     See also any articles by Janice Redish, who is associated with the
     Center. I think you'll be delighted.

     -Phil Hey
     Briar Cliff College
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     Dan, If you look at my article from 1985 STC ( Benson, P. (1985).
     Writing visually: Design considerations in technical publications. STC
     Technical Communication, 33), you'll find some good basic references.

     P. Benson
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     Check out Stephen Doheny-Farina, Document Design: What We Have Learned
     From Research.

     Also, there is extensive literature in the area of discourse and text
     analysis that is applicable to document design.  Check out Robert De-
     Beaugrande's work (I think the title is Text Processing, or something
     with Text in the title, a dense but helpful book).  Also, a book by
     Kintch and Dressler, forget the title, but it's something on text
     grammar or discourse analysis; it's an excellent introductory title to
     principles of cognitive text processing.  Finally, there are articles
     by Walter Kintch, whose work is very applicable to TC document design,
     but these are mostly in psychology journals.  William van de Kopple
     has gathered some of this work in a textbook; again, I don't have the
     title handy, but you'll recognize it if you look under his name in a
     catalog.  The work of M.A.K. Halliday also comes to mind, especially
     older stuff like Halliday and Hasan, Cohesion in English.


     Cezar Ornatowski
     San Diego State University
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     Karen Schriver's literature review, "Document Design from 1980 to
     1989: Challenges That Remain," offers 195 citations as well as a
     comprehensive overview of design issues.
     Technical Communication, Fourth Q 1989, 316-331.

     Carolyn Rude
     ditcr -at- ttacs -dot- ttu -dot- edu
     Department of English, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-3091
     phone 806-742-2517; fax 806-742-0989
     English Department WWW Home Page: http://english.ttu.edu/
     --------------------------------------------------------------

     There is actually a good bit of information available -- though that's
     not always clear to practitioners (or some academics for
     that matter).  In addition to the sources already mentioned, I highly
     suggest a 1989 volume edited by Karen Shriver in STC's _Technical
     Communication_ (vol 36, no 4) which contains a lengthy bibliography.

     Karen Shriver also has a 1995 book from Wiley & Sons dealing with
     document design. If you're interested in the theoretical foundations
     (i.e., perceptual foundations) of document design, see my 1995 book,
     _Coherence, Continuity & Cohesion_ from Lawrence Erlbaum and Assoc.

     Kim Sydow Campbell, Ph.D.
     Associate Professor of Linguistics and Communication
     Air Force Institute of Technology
     kcampbel -at- afit -dot- af -dot- mil
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     How about the excellent bibliographic essay by Benton & Benton in the
     _Bibliographic Essays_ volume edited by Charles Sides.  It is a first
     rate discussion of multiple issues in visuals and tech comm,
     including very fine summaries of some important perceptual work.  Not
     directly "doc design" but very useful supplementation.

     Margaret Hundleby
     Michigan Tech
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     Phillipa Benson (TC, 1989, and 1985) has two articles that are very
     helpful. Also Tufte's two books, Envisioning Information and The
     Visual Display of Graphic Information, are often cited.

     Wendy Warren
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     For a good list of books and articles, see CHAPTER NOTES for Chapter 9
     in Reporting Technical Information, (Houp and Pearsall) 8th edition.
     That chapter and its notes were compiled by Ginny Redish who really
     knows the field.

     Tom Pearsall
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     One possible source for information on chunking and layout would be
     the material published about Information Mapping. Although you'll be
     using the company's material (which is presumably biased towards
     saying Info Mapping is a great system), but then you can fall back on
     the numbers of companies and docs that use that format. In a sense,
     there's some security in the numbers.

     Another possibility would be tech comm textbooks on graphics and
     design. I don't recall the title of the book we used in our class (it
     was a dozen years ago), but the info should be available by checking
     in with schools that offer tech comm programs.

     Rick Lippincott
     Boston Technology
     Wakefield, MA
     rjl -at- bostech -dot- com
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