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We believe in teaching

And we teach who we are. In other words, we don't believe teaching can be reduced to technique. Instead, we believe good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. Info.Design is built upon this teaching philosophy.

Read Thom's story

Identity

Info.Design grew out of founder Thom Haller's "adventure into understanding." Faced with questions that strike many professional communicators, Thom asked, "why am I doing this work I'm doing? Is there something I could be doing that better represents who I am?" The answer he came up with was teach.

Subjects often have a way of choosing us; and that's what happened to Thom. As a person trying to understand and use technology, Thom was often surprised by his own "blobhead" inability to put the pieces together. And in his work as a professional communicator, Thom was amazed at how writers frequently disregarded the users of their documents.

So with a sense of being "klutzy" "frustrated" and "pissed off," Thom stepped into the world of teaching. His user-advocate focus serves as the philosophical underpinning for Info.Design's work.

Integrity

As teachers, we have a choice. We can rely on showmanship—showing students how knowledgeable, smart, friendly, or prepared we are. But this approach to teaching is often marked by fear—fear of being "exposed" as a fraud, the Wizard of Oz's "little man behind the curtain"—someone who doesn't know @#*&. Or we can try to weave a complex web of connections for our students... try to step into our students' experience as best we can and relay what we know so we can help them improve their performance on the job.

We try to follow the second path. Sure we make mistakes. (We even refunded money on an occasion where we did not try to know our audience and tried to perform instead.) But we are in this business because we love what we do.

We believe good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life. And we're in this business because we want to be good teachers.

For more information about how Info.Design can help teach your organization, e-mail thom@thomhaller.com.