ABSTRACT

Chapter 3 discussed user goals and how a user’s desire to achieve them affected a situation. Throughout that discussion, the information that the user needed to understand and track the goals was just assumed to be available. In this chapter, we look at how to define what information is needed and how to present it. In chapter 1, information needs were defined as:

The information required by the user to achieve a goal. These information needs often require both information to initially understand the situation and to access that the goal was achieved. A major aspect of good design is ensuring that the information is provided in an integrated format that matches the information needs required by the user goals. Although a perfect system always contains the information needed to meet a goal, in reality, the design must compensate for incomplete information.