Applying an integrated communications approach to the study of user multimedia interactions

Abstract

[Abstract]: The usual measure of the effectiveness of interactive operations on multimedia texts and related tools, such as navigational buttons and pointing devices, is usability. However, usability evaluations cannot tell us how users make meanings about the text/tools and why they construct such meanings, especially if the users have different social and educational backgrounds. The process of meaning-making is a worthy object of investigation as it can provide insights into why users find the texts/tools effective/ineffective. For investigating this meaning-making, an integrated approach within a communications perspective, comprising visual social semiotics, social construction of computer use, and communicative acts, was applied to a case study of multimedia courseware interactions by Arts & Design students at Institute of Technology, Bandung, Indonesia. Each of the three components of this integrated approach draws attention to a different focus of analysis. Visual social semiotic focuses on revealing potential meanings of visual elements or objects, where users’ interpretations of these elements or objects are influenced by their visual experiences. Social construction of computer use concentrates on the users’ meaning-making which is potentially conditioned by their knowledge and experience with computers. Communicative act focuses on users’ ‘performance of actions’ since when interacting with the text and the tools, there are ‘actions’ which result from the users’ understanding of those text and tools. Data in this study was collected through a range of methods (questionnaires and focus groups with the users, interviews with course leaders and multimedia courseware designers, and observations of users’ activities) focusing on how the users interact with the multimedia text/tools. Analysis of the multimedia text itself also supported the data collection process and its analysis. Results of the study, in general, show that the users have a combination of favourable and unfavourable responses to the research objects, even though the text/tools were developed by following usability guidelines. In the analysis, usability criteria were applied to examine their limitations, followed by the application of the integrated approach to offset the limitations of usability criteria. The investigation shows that the integrated approach is a valuable tool to examine ways in which users construct meaning from the text, and to investigate different meaning-making processes according to the users’ social backgrounds. The integrated approach employed contributes to theories of usermultimedia interactions, particularly to usability studies. The study also provides multimedia course developers with a much richer analytical and developmental tool than is provided by usability per se.