More Than Just Eye Candy: Graphics for e-Learning

We have all heard the cliché: “A picture is worth athousand words. ” There’s just one importantcaveat: It has to be the right picture. And some-times, getting the right picture still isn’t enough. Even the most relevant graphic, if executed poorly or laid out haphazardly, will not enhance learning, but quite possibly will depress it. Robert Rankin reported in 1989 that 92 % of learners ’ comprehension mistakes about graphics were caused by four reasons: 1) layout-related difficulties; 2) lack of caption/picture correspondence; 3) unfa-miliarity of the graphical convention; and 4) misinterpretation of the graphical lay-out. As just one such example, try to decipher the graphic in Figure 1 on page 2. This graphic, indicating the three criti-cal steps in finding data (1-Search, 2-Filter and 3-Select), is plagued by serious graphical choice and layout difficulties. The steps move from right to left; the graphical convention of the ribbons to indicate steps is confusing; and finally, probably no user will “get ” that the data search is through the roadways of the motherboard; worse, it adds significant (and unnecessary) cognitive load to the learner’s attempt to interpret it and to relate it to the content being taught. A colorful picture, perhaps, but as William Winn and William Holliday might suggest, based on their work in 1982, Western audiences are frustrated with illustrations that move from right to left. For all audiences, the relationships of objects should, if possible, reflect their real life arrangement. In the first part of this two-part serie