Information Design Journal - Volume 5, Issue 3, 1986

Juries trying cases of commercial fraud can be faced with literally hundreds of numerical exhibits. This evidence often includes balance sheets, which may be photocopies from ledgers, as well as large tabular arrays showing a company's business over several years, There can also be complex graphs of various kinds. This paper reports a brief three-month project in which it was demonstrated that redesigning the numerical information presented to jurors could be worthwhile. Nevertheless, measurements of people's accuracy and subjective appraisal of the exhibits showed that not all revisions were as successful as had been hoped, Hence 'research continues'.

This paper suggests how the findings of recent research on text design can be applied to the setting of braille. I describe how both the typographic layout and the use of 'access structures' can help readers to find their way around text, and I discuss the results of an experiment that investigated the effects of inserting headings into braille text. Finally I add some comments from a design point of view on Moon - a different way of presenting text to the blind.

This paper concerns the design, production and application of visual acuity tests for pre-literate children from different cultural groups. It presents a comparative analysis of the most common and relevant tests, based on information gathered in a multidisciplinary approach. The inadequacies of visual acuity tests currently in use in several different contexts are highlighted. A series of guidelines are presented for assessing the efficiency of different test materials and techniques, and also to provide a solid foundation from which to progress towards improving them.

This paper, first presented at the Information design conference in December 1986, discusses Bertin's method of displaying numerical data by means of an interactive graphical matrix. In the study the need for empirical verification of theoretical statements is stressed. The ergonomical approach that is chosen for this purpose is subdivided into three major stages: visual perception, motor operations and cognitive information processing. The subject of this paper is mainly restricted to the first stage of visual perception, which is elaborated through some psychophysical experiments concerning the shape and size of symbols that are suited to be used as matrix elements.