In the article Multimedia Principle: Adding Graphics to Words Improves Learning we talked about how the research Mayer and Clark present in their book E-Learning and the Science of Instructio...
Published 11 years ago
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@Simon While keeping the content uncluttered is extremely important, I think the emphasis is more on keeping the content close to the action or item.
Notice on the piston example where text is separated how your eyes have to jet around the screen to connect all the parts. Very quickly your eyes get tired and in my case I stopped looking. The one on the right it was easy to connect the description to the item and my my eyes did not get exhausted.
I guess doing this also encourages using a bit more white space because if you tried to cram too much text on the screen then the illustration would be unreadable.
Notice on the piston example where text is separated how your eyes have to jet around the screen to connect all the parts. Very quickly your eyes get tired and in my case I stopped looking. The one on the right it was easy to connect the description to the item and my my eyes did not get exhausted.
I guess doing this also encourages using a bit more white space because if you tried to cram too much text on the screen then the illustration would be unreadable.