Instructional design as a form of information design

Instructional design is concerned with how to present verbal and visual information to learners in ways that promote effective learning processes and outcomes. Information design is concerned with how to present verbal and visual information to people in ways that promote efficient processing and understanding. The main thesis of this brief article is that instructional design is a form of information design, in which the goal is to help people learn material so that they can use it later. This article reviews exemplary principles of multimedia instructional design that are based on research evidence and have implications for information design.