Screen Design Question
June 23, 2009 12:00 AM
Here's a link to one study:
http://proceedings.informingscience.org/InSITE2008/InSITE08p135-146Eachus452.pdf
I contend that the eye scan in an eLearning course is highly dependent upon what you put on the screen. For example, if you number items and the pathway is fairly linear, the eye will follow the programmed path. If you put an attention getter in the center of the screen, that's where the eye will go. Barring all else, I believe the attention will attempt to pick up where it left off at the last slide or start from the tactile trigger (next button) or status indicator. I'd also contend that less is usually better.
I'd recommend not putting all of the features on the screen. There are likely 3 to 5 common items that fall outside the range of near perfect intuition to use. I'd stick to presenting these in groups. If you must present all items on the screen at one time (still pressuring for less:)) then color code the groups by useage or priority / frequency.
I might highlight the ones I'd expect the user to use all of the time in a specific color and possibly indicate priority with size or another visual indicator. If you extend this a bit further, I'd recommend not making it a screen at all. If you put this into a PDF printable you also have a way to distribute some snazzy marketing material for your course via other means if it looks up to par. This also provides a more natural format to extend the one page 'map' with some narrative descriptions.
Steve
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