What is Information and Instructional Design?

Information design is the practice of turning data into information, and communicating it to the audience in a way that it is most effective. There is a responsibility for the aesthetics and the content to be organised and displayed in an effective way, relative to the context it is designed for, e.g. public transport signs, nutritional information on food packages. Instructional design is similar but as it deals with instructions, there must be an understanding of the problem that is being solved as well as the audience. Instructional design involves guiding a user through a problem in a series of steps which helps the user to solve the problem and to recognise similar problems in the future to apply the instructions to them. Feedback is an important part of the information and instructional design process, to gauge how successful the design is in achieving its goal.

References:
"Information Design". Wikipedia. 8 March 2009. 19 March 2009. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_design ]
Clark, Don. "Instructional Design". 19 March 2009. [ http://www.skagitwatershed.org/~donclark/hrd/learning/development.html ]