Visual design guidelines for improving learning from dynamic and interactive digital text

Abstract

Despite the dynamic and interactive features of digital text, the visual design guidelines for digital text are similar to those for printed text. The purpose of this study was to develop visual design guidelines for improving learning from dynamic and interactive digital text and to validate them by controlled testing. Two structure design guidelines (for enhancing text structure comprehension) and two selective-attention design guidelines (for maintaining the learners' attention on the essential contents) were developed based on the psychological and instructional, technological foundations that can affect the visual design of digital text. In this study, a 2 x 2 factorial design with 141 university students was used to examine the effectiveness of the visual design guidelines. The university students had 20 min to study a piece of digital text with the structure design guidelines, selective-attention design guidelines, both, or no design guidelines applied. Both the structure and selective-attention design guidelines had a positive influence on text structure understanding, essential contents comprehension and usability of digital text. The suggested visual design guidelines were found to be useful for enhancing text comprehension.