Saturday, July 08, 2017

July 14 Designing Information for Life

We have written before of Edward Tufte.

Tufte is the original user experience - UX - designer. He teaches one day seminars in information design which are highly, highly recommended. His specialty is a design philosophy that is at once beautiful and effective because it is detailed.

Think that's not important?

Tufte cites examples of PowerPoint presentations, the ultimate somnambulant pablum, that were poorly designed. People died as a result of decisions based on those self same PowerPoints. Tufte has discussed the PowerPoints leading to decisions in the Challenger and Columbia disasters in past seminars as an example. Today PowerPoint is used extensively in national security and military operations decision making. He even has a monograph on the topic: https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint.

The seminar is reasonably priced as it includes a set of Tufte's reference books. There are slight group and student discounts. It is also fascinating and entertaining; Tufte is professor emeritus at Yale. Best professor you never had? Yes. Recommended.

Edward Tufte one day seminar on information and presentation design in downtown Portland. Details at www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses. 8:45AM-4 $380