Archives: information design

If you are going to publish a digital textbook, the first thing you ought to ask is whether anybody will be able to read it. This seems sort of obvious, but it’s too often left out of discussions about online textbooks and “e-textbooks.” Most e-book versions of college textbooks are just scans of printed pages stuck into a weak knockoff of a web browser. At the other end of the spectrum, professors slap content into “course management systems” without any thought at all to design (and, to be fair, course management systems don’t always make good design particularly easy). Rarely are the content and its presentation designed from the ground up for the medium of delivery — and when they are, the result is too often a mass of hyperlinks and interactive tools that “take advantage of the medium” but don’t actually aid reading or further comprehension. As a result, these means of delivering content to students are usually a step backwards from a well-designed print textbook. That’s a shame, because I think there’s tremendous potential for online textbooks — if they’re designed thoughtfully.

In working on North Carolina Digital History I’ve put a lot of thought and work into making the content as readable as possible — ensuring not only that people will be able to find the material they’re looking for, but also that they’ll be able to read it comfortably and effectively once they’ve found it. I won’t say I’ve entirely succeeded; the current page design is one step in a process of iterative improvement, but I think we’re making considerable progress. It is, in any case, a thoughtful design, and it’s that thought process I want to talk about here. Read the rest of this entry »