Designing on-line animated help for multimedia applications

Abstract

Most users do not use on-line help systems, experiencing difficulties with it. Animated help can provide direct access to the information in a form which is easily understandable. However there are no useful design guidelines for the production of animated help; most existing animation is based on simulation. A series of design problems with this approach has been identified, and it is believed that this approach is too limited. An analysis of help storyboards produced by students during a design experiment showed that their animations differed significantly from computer simulation. This difference can be explained by looking at the theory of visual rhetoric. Moreover visual rhetoric may enable us to bridge the gap between the worlds of computing and animation, and may provide different, more effective, design solutions.