There is no such thing as information design is an excellent article about communication theory. It reminded me of reading about Shannon’s work in The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal Computer and as applied to human systems in Christopher Wickens Enginering Psychology and Human Performance.
"Information cannot be designed; what can be designed are the modes of transfer and the representations of information. This is inherent in the nature of information, and it is important for designers to keep the concepts of information and meaning distinct.
Information is an abstraction from any meaning a message might have and from any particular form a message might take." … "the way in which we represent information to others is of crucial importance in communicating the meaning of the information"
Jef does a great job presenting the fundamentals of information theory and the implications to our field. He stresses the foundation of understanding cognitive, perceptual and motor limitations of humans (by referencing my favourite book of my graduate studies: Card, Moran and Newell’s The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction.