Depth of Information and Digital Mediums

We were out today when someone asked us what we do. We told them we have an IT & design consulting firm. They pressed us again, yes, but what is it that we do? Well, we build things — sometimes websites, sometimes corporate tools, we build whatever is best for a company to communicate their information to their staff or customers. She thought for a moment and then launched into how bad their new system is and that no one can use it and that people were even quitting over it.

The thing that I find interesting about this is how rarely the depth of digital media is used. It’s not like a brochure that has to have a hierarchy and logical order and be read in entirety from left to right. You can present something very simple, in this example let’s say you have a form to fill out, and make it more complex as needed. You can then take whatever information you have gathered and change the output based on who will see it—like when you go to Starbucks and mutter that you want a mocha, to stay, skim milk in the middle size and the barista yells down the line “For Here, Grande, Non-Fat, Mocha” he or she changes the input of your information to better fit the recipients.

The depth of information is the information behind the simplicity, it’s there for people that need it and hidden for those that don’t. Take this diagram, the situation is a form that a patient needs to fill out to have a lab test run:

Depth of Information Graphic