From the Bookshelves: What the User Tells the Designer

Abstract

Graphic designers’ need for feedback is typically answered by other designers. They tend not to engage in the kinds of empirical evaluation which might yield feedback about readers’ performance. Graphic designers also need generous and informative models of readers and their various objectives. In the absence of such feedback and models, designers may set themselves goals which neglect readers’ needs. This article reports informal observation of one reader’s interaction with a series of texts—information displayed on the spines of a serial publication. The reader’s interaction, which led to remedial intervention by that reader to correct a design fault, offers both strong unsolicited feedback about performance and an informal model of one kind of reading objective.