Information design, edited by Robert Jacobson, 2000 Information design: Emergence of a new profession, Robert E. Horn

Information design is defined as the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness. Its primary objetives are:

1. To develop documents that are comprehensive, rapidly and accurately retrievable, and easy to translate into effective action.

2. To design interactions with equipment that are easy, natural, and as pleasant as possible. This involves solving many problems in the design of the human-computer interface.

3. To enable people to find their way in three-dimensional space with comfort and case-especially urban space, but also, given recent developments, virtual space.

Information Visualization, Robert Spence 2001

The data will not always be numerical, though much of it is. It can be ordinal, as whith things that are naturally ordered (such as the days of the week), or categorical, such as the names of animals where there is no order (for example, horse, zebra, antelope).