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 ]

What is Interactive Design?

Interactive design is the designing of elements for digital and screen applications, which create an environment of interaction between the user and the medium. Interactive design is a combination of technical (e.g. code) and aesthetic (the visual appearance). Interactive design shares the same principles as graphic design in that there must be a problem for a design solution to exist, and that the situation and audience must be researched for a solution to be effective. The steps taken in solving an interactive design problem are typically as follows:design research, concept research (brainstorming), persona development, diagramming of the solution, prototyping (in large projects), implementation and testing. Jonas Lowgren identifies that interactive design is not only limited to the design of the digital, but at present is becoming an important part of industrial design where shape, materials and other factors play a part.

References:
“What is interactive design?" WikiAnswers. 19 March 2009. [ http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_interactive_design ]
Lowgren, Jonas. "Interaction Design." Interaction Design. 19 March 2009. [ http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/interaction_design.html ]

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is a movement in web development which has a focus on end-user content generation and collaboration. The term also describes an environment in which data is continually contributed, consumed and re-linked across websites due to a new categorisation system known as folksonomy. Folksonomy is a system of content tagging, where the user defines how their content will be categorised instead of being pidgeonholed into categories already predefined by the website – the tag system on this blog is an example of this folksonomy. Tim Berners-Lee has noted that there is not a notable difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0 – that the architecture and potential has always been there from the beginning, and that the connectivity of Web 2.0 is what the World Wide Web was always meant to be. Undoubtedly, Web 2.0 is powered by people, where every person is as important as everybody else on the internet, both in providing content and in deciding which Web 2.0 ventures will be successful through word-of-mouth.

References:
Anderson, Nate. "Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: "nobody even knows what it means"." Ars Technica. 11 March 2009. [ http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2006/09/7650.ars ]
O'Reilly, Tim. "What is Web 2.0?". O'Reilly Media. 11 March 2009. [ http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1 ]