[Sigia-l] Edward Tufte

[George Olsen]

Karl Fast said:
> So it sounds like you agree with George: his work is good, but his
> academic roots have made him unaware of some practical issues that arise
> in the real world of publishing.

That's a fair summary.

Because we're in a convergent field, we need to be careful in taking the
words of Tufte, Wurman, Nielsen, [insert guru of your choice here] without
considering that they often came out of another, more specific, field
where the context is different.

For example, if you look at Wurman's body of work, he applied info design
principles to publication design _for print_. Nielsen came out of
traditional software engineering and his emphasis on utilitarianism is
very reflective of that. So consider the source.

As Jody's mentioned with Tufte, it's a little unreasonable to compare
web/software UI to the UI of print, which has had centuries of beta
testing -- which is why the latter has reached the point of invisibility
in the hands of a good design (unless the designer decides to call
attention to it)

BTW, thanks Jody for excellent suggestions on how to use it as a client
education opportunity.