Authors:
Dempsey Chang
1
and
Juhani E. Tuovinen
2
Affiliations:
1
School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monash University, Australia
;
2
School of Education, Charles Darwin University, Australia
Keyword(s):
Gestalt theory, Cognitive Load theory, interface design, multimedia instructional screen design
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Design Methodology and Cognitive Factors in Design
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Human-Computer Interaction
;
Multimedia Systems
;
User Needs
Abstract:
Without doubt Gestalt Theory has formed an important basis for many aspects of educational visual screen design. Despite the familiarity many computer screen designers claim with it, Gestalt Theory is not a single small set of visual principles uniformly applied to by all designers. In fact, it appears that instructional visual design literature often deals with only a small set of Gestalt laws. Recently Gestalt literature was consulted to distil the most relevant Gestalt laws for educational visual screen design, resulting in eleven laws being identified. In this paper these laws are discussed in terms of the Cognitive Load Theory, (CLT), which has been used with considerable success to improve instructional design. The usefulness of the combined perspectives drawn from the Gestalt Theory and CLT for educational visual screen design were applied to the redesign of an instructional multimedia application, WoundCare, designed to teach nursing students wound management. The evaluation
results were encouraging. Both the new design and the value of applying the eleven Gestalt laws and CLT principles to improve learning were strongly supported. However, many aspects of applying this combination of theories to educational interface design remain unclear and this forms a useful direction for future research.
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