The effectiveness of educational material to visually transmit information is an important facet in the learning process. Poor visual design confuses learning objectives, frustrates the reader, and makes retention more difficult. Educational psychologists have written extensively on different aspects of improving the visual communications of educational material. Ironically, this research is predominately textual in format and has not penetrated the design community. Two levels in this visual communications exists; one aesthetic, the other cognitive. The former is closely related to traditional design and is most likely to be addressed. The deeper, more value-laden to encoding information, is the cognitive level. It, however, is seldom addressed by designers. Lacking knowledge in educational psychology, designers defer to editors, who conversely lack knowledge of design principles, for visual encoding suggestions. This collaborative process is often hampered by a general lack of communication. The result is a document that is educationally sound with a possibly high aesthetic design quality but poor visual capacity to help encode information.
The appropriate solution proposed was to increase designers' knowledge in cognitive aspects of visually communicating educational material. Educational courses related to encoding strategies and visual information processing were taken. Research was conducted in the fields of education, educational psychology, and design. Applying various research techniques, primary research was conducted into user needs of the main stakeholders: students, editors, designers, and teachers. Current textbook design critiques were explored to identify potential design flaws.
The results was a proposed set of research based visual design criteria. Detailed, visual examples, utilizing this criteria, were produced. These examples were accompanied with an annotated version clearly describing the applied principle and its use.
End user evaluations were then conducted to test the validity of the criteria. For this, a chapter from a current textbook was redesigned in accordance with the criteria. Following a comparative analysis of the two designs, usability tests were conducted with 8th grade students. Design critiques were solicited from five individuals involved with aspects of textbook usage or design. This research is a practical guide offering possible solutions and creates a common resource for critiquing purposes between editors and designers. My research focuses on middle school print material.