Infogineering Processes: Layout

The way information is laid out on a page is important.

In the West, we start reading a page from the top-left corner, towards the bottom-right (in most Eastern languages, it is the top-right). Therefore, we consider Information at the top and left of the screen more important than that towards the bottom and right.

Most websites recognise this. They have a logo at the top or top-left of the page. They then have a navigation bar along the top, or down the left-hand side of the page. There then follows the main content of the page, and finally a bar at the bottom with copyright and legal information.

This layout allows people to quickly get to the information that they are likely to use most often, while the information that they are least-likely to access is along the bottom.

If there is a large volume of text, it is better to split it up into columns rather than have each line containing too many words - just as newspapers do. Online, or in an e-mail, thinner columns can be used (the standard in an e-mail is up to 65 characters).