19 - Document Design

Source: Energy-Delay Tradeoffs in Smartphone Applications, Moo-Ryong Ra et. all

The above document is indicative of the design of nearly all technical papers, and is taken as a general reference rather than a specific case. It is a standard, academic paper outline that is utilized at all levels of education and in government as a piece of research communication.

The issue with this format is that it is designed to fully document many aspects of a piece of research and cite many sources, but does so all in a condensed, overly wordy way. This forces the reader to take in a massive amount of information in a single display, and as such, detracts from the end goal of the author; namely to convey information about the research done.

Because of the attention to detail, the reader is forced to reference many separate pieces of information in each section. Instead, it would be far more effective if the author presented a single aspect utilizing info-graphics and other key methods of communication to draw attention to each section rather than cramming the text into two columns. Each page should be viewed as a communication of a single aspect of the research to keep the context firmly in the reader's mind rather than simply referring to a source and continuing on as if the reader was deeply familiar with the source.

As such, this argument applies to all standard format papers rather than this particular, singular example.