Effective Multimedia Design

Effective Visual Design Statements

Chang. D. et al “Gestalt Theory in Visual Screen Design – A New Look at an Old Subject”

1)    The distillation of 114 Gestalt laws to indentify 11 guidelines for screen design provides a useful tool for enhancing instructional screen display.  The application of these guidelines provides a framework to guide the construction and placement of individual screen elements.  Through their use designers can improve their understanding of how elements are organised into fields or structures to improve instructional screen design and hence improve learning.

2)    Those without special visual education recognise the value of visual interface design for their own learning and for improving screen appearance in learning effectiveness. Even though there is some uncertainty about the educational benefits of some of the Gestals laws, an understanding of effective visual design is increasingly necessary as educators  become more involved with instructional screen-base learning.

DeRosia. E. “The Effectiveness of Nonverbal Symbolic Signs and Metaphors in Advertisements: An Experimental Inquiry”

1)    It is argued that nonverbal advertising elements in real-world advertisements are richer and more complex than those used in consumer-psychology research.  To comprehend complex meaning of nonverbal symbolic signs and metaphors consumers are required to exert a non-trivial level of cognitive effort to be active interpreters of meaning.  As authors of ads intend to suggest meaning an understanding of how viewers decode text to derive meaning is required.  Interpretation is context, time and culturally dependent and is not necessarily automatic.  

2)    The effectiveness of nonverbal symbolic signs and metaphors will be low among ad recipients with low motivation and those with high motivation. It will however be high among ad recipients with moderate motivation.  For this reason effective stimulus should suggest meaning that recipients are likely to counterargue. 

Hastler. B. et al “Learner Control, Cognitive Load and Instructional Animation”

1)    The need for effective use of animation for learning is highlighted by the fact that animation can pose a greater threat to cognitive processing demands than static visuals due to the transient nature of critical elements in animation. Animation can be too fast and too complex to be accurately perceived. Learner control to pace animation for instructional purposes contributes to improved learning.

2)    Perceived access to control and factors other than control may enhance student motivation & attention when viewing animation.  Learners with stop-play control out performed the continuous play group even though most participants in the stop-play group viewed the animation continuously. The benefits of learner-controlled animation are enhanced when students are asked to evaluate their understanding before receiving corrective feedback.

Mayer. R, & Moreno. R.   “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning”  

 1)    In multimedia learning, active processing requires five cognitive processes: selecting words, selecting images, organizing words, organizing images, and integrating.  Instructional design recognizes the need for multimedia instruction that is sensitive to cognitive overload. Cognitive overload occurs when total intended processing exceeds learners cognitive capacity. Reducing cognitive load can involve redistributing essential processing, reducing incidental processing or reducing representational holding.    

2)  Limited human capacity exists for both auditory and visual processing. To avoid cognitive overload when learning from multimedia, efficient use of this capacity is required. To reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning:

i.      Off-load essential processing from visual channel to audio channel.

ii.     Segment to allow time between bite-size segments.

iii.   Pretrain names and characteristics to familiarise beforehand.

iv.    Weed out unecessary interesting but extraneous material.

v.     Signal with cues to support processing of materia.

vi.    Align text near corresponding images to reduce visual scanning.

vii.  Eliminating redundancy or duplication of text and narration.

viii. Synchronizing narration with corresponding animation to minimize representations held in memory.

ix.    Individualizing learning to match learners’ skill of holding mental representations.