Saving Lives with Design

valdean writes "Last year, the White House declassified an August 2001 intelligence brief entitled: 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' Among other things, the brief mentions that Bin Ladin 'wanted to hijack a US aircraft.' So why was it ignored? Graphic designer Greg Storey thinks part of the reason is poor design. He set out to modify the format of the original document into a more legible one."

Comments

Re:The spoon explanation.

[mboverload]

Bush already has said he doesn't read newspapers and has aids read him stuff. He doesn't even look at it.

Latin Jibberish Generator... probably from iWork..

[green pizza]

Several desktop pubishing applications can generate "latin jibberish" to fill in text areas. It looks silly at first, but it helpful for layout. "Pages", part of Apple's iWork package, is one app that I know does this.

Re:Latin Jibberish Generator... probably from iWor

[vijayiyer]

It's called "Lorem Ipsum" and is purposely gibberish. It's used by designers so that one focuses on layout rather than content.

Re:Latin Jibberish Generator... probably from iWor

[vijayiyer]

Further information is available at http://www.lipsum.com/

Re:hindsight

[hugzz]

Oops: meant to say pseudo-Latin...

it's lorem ipsum. basicly filler text that looks like english but wont distract the viewer from the real subject matter (the design)

Re:News for nerds?

[NanoGator]

"I fail to see how this has anything to do with Slashdot."

It's fashionable on Slashdot these days to criticize the US. I'd say more but I fear mod retaliation.

Re:Something I've wondered

[nacturation]

I've always wondered why the classified and confidential stuff is always in black and white - never in any other color.

Because most photocopiers don't support color? When a document is redacted, the original is first photocopied, then a big black felt is used to redact the sensitive information, then it gets photocopied again before being distributed so that you can't see the original text under the ink. That's also why the declassified documents look so terrible -- the document that results after being degraded by multiple photocopies is the one which gets printed.

Design

[rathehun]

Now I don't expect everyone on /. to be stupid, but I don't expect them to be stupid in the extreme either.

No where in TFA does it say that "Design could have prevented 9/11".

Usability is something which can help. Think about hospital steps. If there is a ramp there, it helps people with wheelchairs get up there. Sure, ramps don't go around saving lives by throwing themselves over bombs or anything, but they do help by helping people use the facility.

Now - look at the two different documents. What is lost by using the second one? All the information stays the same. What one does is to visually cue a person, providing easy ways to categorise the document without even reading it.

You disagree?

Try reading the same post as above, with a slight modification. Spacing doesn't save lives. Does it?

NowIdon'texpecteveryoneon/.tobestupid,butIdon'te xp ectthemtobestupidintheextremeeither.Nowherein"Desi gncouldhaveprevented9/11".Usabilityissomethingwhic hcanhelp.Thinkabouthospitalsteps.Ifthereisarampthe re,ithelpspeoplewithwheelchairsgetupthere.Sure,ram psdon'tgoaroundsavinglivesbythrowingthemselvesover bombsoranything,buttheydohelpbyhelpingpeopleusethe facility.Now-lookatthetwodifferentdocuments.Whatis lostbyusingthesecondone?Alltheinformationstaysthes ame.Whatonedoesistovisuallycueaperson,providingeas ywaystocategorisethedocumentwithoutevenreadingit.

So what you mean to say is..

[AkaXakA]

There is no spoon?

PS. Also not that this redesign is A YEAR old.

Edward Tufte links

[Anonymous Coward]

Linkage: Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Full of good information for anyone that must present some sort of data, not just those using PowerPoint.

Re:hindsight

[1u3hr]

Hindsight is always 20/20

So that's why this is news over a year later. The TFA is dated "11 April 04". Slashdot: all the old news, dupes and hoaxes fit to print.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how the information was presented. Bush DOESN'T READ these reports. He has his staff read them to him and summarise; even the one page format, which seemed like a dumbing down when Reagan did it, is too much detail for him.

Revisionism

[pudge]

This is nice revisionism and all, but there is no evidence that the memo in question was "ignored." The 9/11 Commission notes quite plainly on page 342 that:

Despite such reports and a 1999 paper on Bin Ladin's command structure for al Qaeda,there were no complete portraits of his strategy or of the extent of his organization's involvement in past terrorist attacks.Nor had the intelligence community provided an authoritative depiction of his organization's relationships with other governments,or the scale of the threat his organization posed to the United States.

Further:

Whatever the weaknesses in the CIA's portraiture,both Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush and their top advisers told us they got the picture--they understood Bin Ladin was a danger.But given the character and pace of their policy efforts,we do not believe they fully understood just how many people al Qaeda might kill,and how soon it might do it.At some level that is hard to define,we believe the threat had not yet become compelling.

In other words, it's not that they didn't realize what the memos said, but at the time, the memos did not amount to compelling evidence of the threat we now know was coming.

Now, you can feel free to disagree with the 9/11 Commission. But to say as a statement of fact that it was ignored is, well, ignoring the evidence (and inventing new evidence).