Tracing Visual Narratives: User-Testing Methodology for Developing a Multimedia Museum Show    

As a cognitive framework for making meaning of the world, the narrative provides a powerful form for structuring information, and has been adopted as a useful design framework for many communicative forms, including interactive media. This paper reports on the use of visual narrative for user-testing an interactive museum show. The viewers’ perceived narratives of a sequence of graphics from a show on brain science were compared to the designers’ intended narrative. Mapping the audience’s reading of the visual arguments proved a useful testing structure in developing the show, with color and pattern tracking proving especially critical when viewers experienced novel or abstract information.

Kim, Loel. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Usability>Testing>Visual Rhetoric

Web Design Issues When Searching for Information in a Small Screen Display  

In this paper, we report preliminary findings from an experimental study in which twenty-eight users answered questions by performing strategic information searches on web pages. Pages, which varied in length from 100 to 850 words, were displayed on either a standard, desktop monitor (full-sized) or a palm handheld interface (small-screen). Overall, users took more time to perform the tasks on the small screen interface, with the break in efficacy appearing between 225 and 350 word-lengths. Finally, contrary to our hypothesis, participants were similarly accurate across conditions.

Kim, Loel and Michael J. Albers. ACM SIGDOC (2001). Presentations>Web Design>Wireless Web>PDA

Web Design Issues When Searching for Information Using Handheld Interfaces    

Mobility and access seem to be the features the technology industry has identified as necessary in our communications future. Experts predict that we are heading away from the desktop computer as the standard technology on campuses and in the workplace (Bloomberg 2001; Chen 1999; Weiser 1998), while at the same time the industry continues to develop more powerful delivery and storage capabilities for handheld devices. Potential uses for personal digital assistants (PDAs) have quickly grown beyond simple address/date book applications, and toward more complex, interactive uses, with an eye to connecting individuals on the go with huge databases of technical information (Chen 1999; Du Bois and McCright 2000). However, as proponents and creators of effective information design, we technical communicators need to know more about how people perceive information when using small interfaces so that we may create effective information for them, or adapt information design from desktop interfaces for the small interface.

Kim, Loel and Michael J. Albers. Technical Communication Online (2002). Design>Web Design>Wireless Web