"Hierarchies organize things from best to worst, biggest to smallest, fastest to slowest, least expensive to most, and so on. It's a perfectly logical way to organize certain information. If you're looking for a restaurant, you might want a list that goes from best to worst, or by relative expense. Of course, you might also want restaurants listed by location. If I wanted to know about the 10 biggest companies in the United States, I wouldn't list them alphabetically; I would organize them by hierarchy according to their size."
WHAT DESIGN REALLY MEANS "In general, people don't organize things very well. They tend to do not what would make the most sense but instead what they are able to do. For instance, the computer comes along and allows us to do a pie chart easily, right at our desks, so we do pie charts. Then the computer allows us to do the chart in 256 colors. So we do it in colors. Then it also allows us to change the perspective, so we make the circle into an oval. And then we can change it into a three-dimensional form and then make it throw a shadow. Now, every single thing we did--each one fairly easy to do--makes the information in the chart less understandable than it was in the first place. In fact, you probably shouldn't have chosen a pie chart to begin with. But that's what most of us do.
"We don't choose the right approach to begin with, and we focus on making it look better rather than be better. Design, most people think, is about cosmetics. It's about taking a product or a book and applying mascara. But it shouldn't be. Information architecture isn't just graphics; it's about how to choose the right way to present information and how to help people navigate through it. It's a way of thinking. It's how you go about something. It's a whole way of life in which the aim is not to make something look good but to make it be good, and that is a very important fork in the road for most attempts at communication.
"Communication gets screwed because most people try to look good and sound good, above all else. I've tried to abandon all that. I embrace my normality. I think I go directly to the essence of things because there's nothing else in the way. I've worked at clearing out the crap--the preconceptions, the desire to impress other people. Trying to look smarter than you are. Why have different-colored socks in your drawer if you really just want to wear thick white socks every day? That's all I have, thick white socks. I can go pull out a pair of socks with the lights off."
THE YELLOW PAGES STORY "The primary choice about which way you organize something is made by deciding how you want it to be found. I was asked to redesign the Pacific Bell Yellow Pages. I realized the yellow pages, in their simplest form, are an exercise in finding something. And the find-it process has broken down because of the proliferation of incoherent headings, all arranged alphabetically. Automobile, for example, has hundreds of headings, 90% of which do not start with Auto but relate to automobiles: repair, buying, selling, insuring, accidents, parts, and so on. I ended up designing the first 80 pages of each of the 96 directories I did to show that you can find things by category. I also categorized by time--which places are open all the time, on holidays, or on weekends. And also by location--where places are on maps, so you can tell which gas station or restaurant is closest to where you are--as well as alphabetically."
DESIGNING A LIFE "Each of the more than 60 books I've authored, designed, and published was inspired by something I didn't understand, whether it was diagnostic tests on my own body or finding my way around Tokyo or around the Olympics on TV. In all of them I have tried to embrace my ignorance by finding a phrase that captures a solution to pursue, such as, 'I want to know where I am and what's around me,' or, 'You don't travel alphabetically,' or, 'Most Auto headings don't begin with Auto.' My struggle has been to discover the connection that leads from information to memory. The junctures of road-to-road and path-to-path celebrate that connection. That connection is learning, and learning is remembering what you're interested in.
"The big design problem we all have is designing our own lives. If we do it right, wouldn't the best result--the best measure of success, ultimately--be that every day is interesting?
"Most people don't have enough interesting things in their lives, so in place of interest they try to accumulate funds and power. But I think you're going to be a better businessperson if you look at your life as a collection of hobbies, a collection of interests, not a matter of things you do during the day and things you do in the evening--or what you do during the day and what you do during the weekend. Think of everything you do as driven by and connected to your real interests, and it's going to affect how you look at the products you're making.
"I can't think of a person who wouldn't benefit from being able to have clearer conversations, internally and externally, with their clients and their staff. From being in sync with their public.
"To me, what I'm talking about is really fundamental stuff for a businessperson, not just the luxury of an oddball designer. I think we're all creative because we all have problems we want to solve, and you can talk through the solution to any of them. You don't have to be 'creative' in the strict sense of the word to do that. You just have to want to do it very badly."
Resources
RICHARD SAUL WURMAN, TED Conferences, P.O. Box 186, Newport, RI 02840 60
