Effective Use of Multimedia

If you're trying to share information in multimedia format (i.e., pictures, text, sound, animation, video, audio), here are some tips to help you create more effective multimedia presentations.

Presenting "familiar" topics and details (i.e., names, places) that people have to recall? Use TEXT.

Presenting "non-familiar" topics about procedures and processes? Use VIDEO (Graphic/Audio)

Presenting a page that contains both text and audio? Say the text, then pause and stay silent long enough for the reader to read the text on her own.

Want more tips? See Multimedia vs Text Presentation

That's from The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes (Steve Outing and Laura Ruel)

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I once made a video tutorial using CamtasiaStudio and displayed a sentence on the screen. During the tutorial, I moved the cursor near the sentence and read the sentence out loud (audio track). I then moved the cursor to another sentence and read that one out loud as well.

After reading the article, I'll now pause after reading text out loud. I suppose it's like driving and talking with someone in the car; either you'll focus on the road, or you'll focus on the voice.
[ First posted on 09/24/2004 by Manuel Viloria ]