Minimalism & Information Mapping

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    I believe two ideas help document design and also the product design.

  • Minimalism
  • Information Mapping

I want to emphasize the importance of minimalism. Most commercial products suffer from feature creep, with many features added more for novelty than for their use. According to a general estimate, we rarely use 80 percent of product features, making the product UI cluttered and the application bulky. The very same features intended to make the product easier to use will keep increasing its complexity. The same thing applies to the technical writing tools and also for Technical Writing. The writing is highly effective when the idea or concept is both concise and detailed enough. 

Most technical writing tools are affected by feature creep. One of the most common examples I want to site is the experience of copy-pasting content from some other source. You are required to clear the text formatting before pasting or while pasting, increasing the number of steps you are required to perform. Often, it is simpler to do this with a free or open-source text editor than a sophisticated authoring tool. The number of styles and the formatting options available will add more to the complexity of the product than to its utility.

Information Mapping in writing encourages presenting information in a less cluttered way with plenty of tables, charts, lists, and infographics that will make it easier to grasp information. Information Mapping is a practice more than a concept. You can worry less about the theory associated with Information Mapping and focus solely on making the information less cluttered and better organized. There is no single best way to do it. Constantly rethink the way we present information. A task generally has numbered steps. Consider a table for the same when it has to capture the gist of an entire process. The first column can have a step number, the second column having a step title, and the third column can have step details, along with any sub-steps and graphics if required. 

You can apply Information Mapping to the product design as well. Focus on having less cluttered and better-organized UI, which makes its features almost self-explanatory. It is required to have a good understanding of the styles, fonts, and the theme that can go together.

Cover page image - S.R. Crown Hall, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1956. Unmodified CC image courtesy of Peter Alfred Hess.

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