Document design

This article focuses on a fairly new discipline in the field of language and communication studies, i.e. document design. Document design is defined as the field of theory and practice aimed at creating comprehensible, persuasive and usable functional documents. The article discusses both its social and its academic mission. On the one hand, document design intends to meet the communicative needs of individuals and organizations in modern society;
on the other, it fits in with a new view on language training and text research which is characterized by a close connection of theory and practice and a high degree of interdisciplinarity and social relevance.

After an introductory first section, section 2 briefly motivates why document design professionals are needed. In section 3, the social relevance of document design research is argued for and illustrated by describing the set up and results of one of the earlier Dutch studies into the effectiveness of government forms. Section 4 surveys the different types of knowledge and expertise a document design expert is expected to display. Section 5 goes into the academic training of document design professionals: how should document design training at an academic level be organized so as to achieve both its academic and social mission? Section 6 illustrates how document design gradually takes up its place as an interdisciplinary scientific discipline with its specific research goals and methods.