The importance of Design in creating a Knowledge Product

Summary: The use of knowledge products, such as white papers, research documents and presentations, is a way of exploiting the partnership between designers and researchers.

03 Jan • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

The hunger for knowledge has broken down all barriers, and today, you can access Ivy League content from your sofa.

We've seen a profusion of online learning platforms, from the early days of Academic Earth to Codecademy, which a few years ago commissioned Pentagram to design its branding.

There is a clear trend here: Design is revolutionizing the field of knowledge in ways never imagined.

From basic tasks, such as setting font sizes and line heights correctly, to complex interactive data visualizations, designers and researchers must work together to make knowledge more accessible and impactful.

There are conflicting definitions of a knowledge product, so let’s define what we mean here.

Knowledge product as any content created with the aim of passing on some learning.

With the growth of social media and marketing strategies, the term knowledge product has come to be used to refer to products designed to sell knowledge.

But this term goes far beyond sales, especially when we bring this type of product into academic research.

Examples of knowledge products:

  • White Papers;

  • Research Papers;

  • Research Presentations;

  • Interactive Visualizations;

  • Knowledge Repositories.

White papers

Seen as an academic tool for disseminating technical information and also as a B2B advertising channel, these documents can have a multiplier effect if, in addition to communicating the simple message written in words, they can also send subconscious messages such as visual confidence, innovation, and credibility.

These subconscious messages are conveyed through the design of the white paper since the visual is the reader's first contact with the knowledge products.

Text formatting, layout, and colors of your white paper can help convey that the authors of that research are innovative thinkers, trustworthy, and very serious about their knowledge/expertise.

Research Papers

A research paper is as good as the number of people who made something good out of it. This kind of knowledge product has a lot of potential if produced with the right design.

Charles Peirce's workbooks were hidden in a room in Cambridge, and if it weren't for pure luck and a lot of hard work, we wouldn't know his take on semiotics.

Most of academic papers are never cited. In some areas, like humanities, for example, it could go as high as 82%. Although this number is lower for other areas, it is still concerning.

I am pretty sure there is a lot of good information buried in the datasets of Elsevier and ResearchGate.

Probably, they are not cited for two reasons:

  • Very few people found the paper;

  • whoever read it didn't get past the Executive Summary.

Poor design or typography has a huge impact on the reader's experience. Inadequate line height causes the reader to skip lines and get lost in the text, making the reading experience tiring and unpleasant.

The use of professional editorial design in research publications is still unusual but really powerful.

Example: Suppose you are reading a paragraph about artificial intelligence and surveillance, and it is laid out beside an image resembling “Hall” from Kubrick’s Space Odyssey. In that case, that will spark a whole lot of feelings and thoughts in the readers, making the consumption of information more fulfilling and memorable.

Editorial design helps to create a professional and engaging design so that your research paper becomes visually appealing and easy to read.

Research Presentations

You need more than just your research to be good; it needs to look good.

79% of people agree that most presentations are boring. To change this opinion, you need to invest in presentation design.

Presentation design is important because it benefits both the researchers and the audience. Attractive, well-organized slides can ensure that the audience remains engaged.

This engagement is really important when members of your audience attend several Research Presentations in a day, which is very common in the academic community.

To get your audience to learn more about your work or read your research paper, you need an engaging research presentation.

The following steps can help you:

  • Cut out unnecessary words, limiting the content of your slides to the essentials. Too much text can make your slides look confusing and overwhelm the audience.

  • Use a single piece of information on a single slide. If you are talking about two or more topics, divide them into different slides to make them easier to understand.

  • Create short titles for the slides in your presentation. Think of a key point that you want the audience to understand from each slide.

  • Add facts and figures to your research presentation, and harness the power of data visualization. The use of visuals provokes a faster and stronger reaction than words alone.

Check out the steps applied in a simple way in this example with one of the presentations we created:

Interactive Visualizations

With the constant production of data in the academic community, Interactive Visualizations are a great way to analyze various aspects and demands presented by the object of study in a research project.

They can present key elements in the study of research data, aspects of interest not only to the researcher but also to those who provide the data, fund the research, or study it through visual elements such as diagrams, graphs, and maps.

Interactive Visualizations make research elements more intuitive and make it easier to read, interpret, and study large masses of data.

Here's an example of an interactive visualization we created for the Bertelsmann Foundation - North America to track COVID-19 vaccine donations in 2021.

See how users can get information dynamically and quickly through this knowledge product. You can check out the full results at dose-of-good-news.bfna.org.

Other types of knowledge products

There are many other different types of knowledge products. The ones I've listed above are the most common. But you can also find knowledge products like explainer videos and dataset explorers.

Explainer Videos

It's short, snappy, engaging, and can transform the way people connect with knowledge for academic and educational purposes.

An explainer video is a short movie that aims to communicate how something works in a simple way.

Check out this example:

Dataset Explorers

Dataset Explorer is a simple interface that enables users to list out and select all files from a dataset or analysis task.

Here are some examples for you to check out:

Some work better with certain types of information than others. This will depend on the objectives of your research and the audience you want to reach.

Regardless of the type of knowledge product you choose, knowing how to apply the right design will make all the difference.

As I said, design is revolutionizing the field of knowledge in ways never imagined, and I know you want to be included in this evolution. Your research deserves to be presented in a way that is as good as the content.

Conclusion

A knowledge product is any content created with the aim of imparting learning. Designers and researchers must work together to make the dissemination of this knowledge more accessible and impactful.

The use of knowledge products such as White Papers, Research Papers, Research Presentations, and Interactive Visualizations is one of the ways to exploit this partnership, making research achieve incredible results.

Want to understand better how applying design to your knowledge product can change the results and reach of your research? Let us know.