Relevance-First Information Design

Core Principle

Decide which information belongs at the current layer and which information should remain available behind a clear drill-down path.

The consumer should encounter the minimum sufficient information needed for the current action, decision, understanding, or navigation step. Additional detail should remain accessible without competing for attention by default.

This skill is about information selection and disclosure, not about choosing whether visible information should be represented as a table, list, hierarchy, diagram, or prose. Use information-representation-design for that.

Requirements

• Reduce unnecessary cognitive load.
• Do not hide information that may be necessary to continue correctly.
• Separate routing from detail.
• Keep each layer internally coherent in abstraction level.

Layers