More Than Just Eye Candy: Graphics for e-Learning: Part 2 of 2 parts

Phase III: Design the visual approach

Graphics for most e-Learning projects fall into one of three broad categories: the Graphical User Interface (GUI) designed to support the training package as a whole; the individual graphics designed to support individual content points within lessons; and the layout of each screen to best support the instruction.

Even a mishmash of random choices is a style, deliberate or not. In this third phase, the team previews the graphic requirements of the entire course to assess specific real-estate or interface elements needed to accommodate individual graphics. These are incorporated into the GUI as well as into any specifications that will dictate the style of the individual graphics.

In Figure 5, the interface for a banking course uses elements from US Treasury paper money (scroll work, seals, etc.) and money colors (green and gold) to relate to the content. In Figure 6, it was appropriate to find or create some of the graphics before the specific screen was laid out. You can see in Figure 7 how the interface that was started in Figure 6 still leaves plenty of room for individual graphics. Figure 7 is a sequenced build of the new account procedure.

FIGURE 5 Graphical user interface related to content Credit: Mark A. Palmer for Computer Management & Integrators, Inc.

FIGURE 6 An individual graphic to illustrate a process

FIGURE 7 Graphics within the interface

Ideally, the look and feel is the culmination of careful consideration of the elements below.

Make a preliminary assessment of content graphic requirements

It’s important to assess the general requirements of the individual graphics before settling on a treatment or GUI that ultimately must accommodate them. Seasoned training professionals typically assess what they deem the “worst-case” graphic — in terms of real estate, page orientation, colors, and functionality needs. This need is especially great in big projects, with multiple instructional designers, writers and artists. For example, one team recently created a GUI for a 12-module course that restricted graphics to the upper right quadrant. But two entire modules needed graphics with a horizontal (or landscape) span. The GUI couldn’t support them and had to be adjusted. New templates needed to be created at a late stage in the development process.

Also assess the individual graphics in terms of the general communication functions and psychological learning events required by the content (discussed in more detail in Phases IV and V below). Finally, if you are responsible for designing the GUI, your design depends on many of the factors you assessed in the first two phases of this Model.

Determine the image the package should project

The image (variously called the “look and feel,” the GUI, or even the style) communicates in a way that influences the e-Learning’s acceptance and credibility. Also, the sponsoring organizations often have strong opinions about this image. Companies often want their training to be a reflection of the corporate culture. For example, some organizations may believe a comic book treatment undermines the seriousness of the subject matter or projects a less-than-professional image. On the other hand, other organizations may feel that same comic book treatment makes the material accessible and less overwhelming to the learner. After assessment of the learner, content, environment and goals of the training, eBG Training department successfully employed a colorful treatment similar to the palette used in Figure 8 in its ad campaigns.

FIGURE 8 A cartoon treatment Credit: Copyright 2002 Intel Corporation

The bottom line is to determine the image appropriate to learner, content, environment and acknowledgment of the sponsoring organization’s desires.

Phase IV: Match communication function to content types

In this phase of our design model, you evaluate your content to determine individual graphics that will illustrate key instructional points. You plan graphics best suited to help learners acquire five content types: procedures, concepts, facts, processes and principles.

For example, if your course goal is to teach procedures, you will want to use representational and transformational graphics to illustrate how to apply steps to the objects or equipment involved in the procedure. The representation graphic communicates to the learner what the object the step involves looks like — a drop-down list in a software application, a piece of equipment, or a tool to be used to complete the task. Use representation graphics also to communicate what the object looks like when the task is completed incorrectly. The transformational graphic, which shows changes over space or time, can illustrate the object before, during, and after the task is completed. You may want to use animations of the step-action-consequence cycle for each step or stage.

In Figure 9 for example, an HIV lesson uses a series of animations to illustrate how HIV infects and replicates itself using the DNA of human cells.

FIGURE 9 A transformational graphic drug interaction Credit: Image reproduced by permission of Roche, Basel, Switzerland

Phase V: Apply principles of psychological instructional events to visual design decisions

Assess your graphic to make sure it supports the six key instructional events of learning. These include ways to use graphics and graphic treatments to help learners: focus attention, activate prior knowledge in memory, minimize cognitive load, build new mental models, maximize transfer of learning and support motivation in ways that do not disrupt learning.

For example, suppose you decided on an animation to illustrate a procedure for a western audience. During the animation, focus attention by using sequence and visual cues to draw the learner’s eye to the parts of the illustration being discussed. Animations can easily result in cognitive overload. Activate prior knowledge by using objects (screens or equipment) with which the learners have some familiarity, perhaps even that which you have built in previous topics. To help manage cognitive load, limit the number of steps demonstrated according to the 7±2 rule (“Human working memory has a capacity of seven ‘chunks’ of information, plus or minus two”). Provide explanations via audio narration, rather than having lengthy text explanations appearing onscreen, causing the learner to try to read and watch the animation at the same time. To support learner control, which sometimes helps manage cognitive load, insert a pause and replay button. To minimize the extra load, follow the reading conventions of the audience. For western audiences, build your animation as we noted previously, from left to right, top to bottom, or in a clockwise arrangement. The closer that arrangement mirrors the objects in “real-life,” the better the transfer of learning.

Again, when you lay out your screens, also apply these guidelines to make sure explanatory content is kept with related graphics, that appropriate techniques are used to reduce distracting elements, and that cues are used to direct attention.

Summary

If the instructional designer who created the screen in Figure 1 had followed a systematic approach to planning her graphics, her design might have looked like the one in Figure 10. This graphic design puts the focus on the tasks to be learned. The topic heading — Search, Filter and Select — is now grounded by being displayed in conjunction with software screens through which the tasks are performed.

FIGURE 10 A redesign of Figure 1, using graphics to support learning

As Ruth said in the first article in this series, to choose the best graphic for learning purposes requires consideration of your instructional goals, the learning landscape, and the learners who will participate. We believe that these factors are best considered through the lens of a systematic visual design model, such as the one I have presented here.

REFERENCES

Ogilvy, David (1983) Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Vintage Books, Division of Random House.

Rankin. R.O. (1989). The Development of an Illustration Design Model. Educational Technology Research and Development, 37 (2), 25-46.

Winn, W. and Holliday, W. (1982) Design Principles for Diagrams and Charts. The Technology of Text (Jonassen, D. H., Ed.) Volume 1.

Comments

Login or subscribe to comment