The relationship between user experience, learning, and psychology is complex. There are many rules and concepts that guide experience design. It is likely that some of the guidance is valid whereas other guidance is not. This explores some of that guidance and evaluates how they are linked to learning. Do the guidance’s made 25, 50, 100 years ago still hold true today? Additionally, the psychological background behind the way someone holds memory is important. Knowing how information is stored and processed helps educators provide the best learning experience possible. With an eye toward perception and cognition, this paper examines the relevance of the various pieces of guidance. The results suggest that, overall, this guidance is still valid and valuable to current learning trends and designs. This suggests that user experience designers for education need to pay attention to the guidance provided by psychology when designing learning management systems, placing content in a course, and choosing which aesthetics to follow.

The utilization of multimedia videos has increasingly become more popular, especially in the field of education. In order to facilitate learning it is important to create a natural interaction between the learner and the on-screen material. This study focused on improving the facilitation of the information within a multimedia learning video by focusing on the gender and quality of computer-synthesized voices. Using a randomized pretest - posttest design the study looked at how the gender of the narrator affected a person's ability to learn and implement a new task. Narration was performed by a male and female, classic and modern synthesized voices to determine if there were gender effects across both generations of voices. The participants’ learned knowledge was assessed through a multiple-choice assessment and a word to image matching transfer assessment. Results showed no significant results. Future studies should consider a more reliable knowledge assessment and utilize and larger sample size.

Providing the user with good user experience is complex and involves multiple factors. One of the factors that can impact the user experience is animation. Animation can be tricky to get right and needs to be understood by designers. Animations that are too fast might not accomplish anything and having them too slow could slow the user down causing them to get frustrated.

This study explores the subject of animation and its speed by trying to answer the following questions – 1) Do people notice whether an animation is present 2) Does animation affect the enjoyment of a transition? and 3) If animation does affect enjoyment, what is the effect of different animation speeds?

The study was conducted using 3 prototypes of an application to order bottled water in which the transitions between different brands of bottled water were animated at 0ms, 300ms and 650ms. A survey was conducted to see if the participants were able to spot any difference between the prototypes and if they did, which one they preferred.

It was found that most people did not recognize any difference between the prototypes. Even people who recognized a difference between the prototypes did not have any preference of speed.

The advancement of technology has transformed information consumption into an accessible and flexible process. The open learning ecosystem that exists online relies on self-direction. Learners are able to effectively fulfill personal learning goals with preferred content forms, specifically by utilizing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). It is essential to investigate the role of mediums in distributed learning to initiate human-centric design changes that best support the learner. This study provides insight into how choice influences self-learning and highlights the major engagement difficulties of MOOCs. Significant attrition was experienced while issuing text and audio material to participants for three weeks. Although this prevented valid statistical tests from being run, it was clear that text was the most desirable and effective medium. Students that read exhibited the highest comprehension levels and selected it as their de-facto consumption method even if audio was made available. Since this study involved complex topics, this supported the transient information effect. Future studies should focus deeply on the structure of online courses by implementing personable engagement features that improve overall participation rate.

Multimedia learning has become increasingly popular as it proceeds to understand how different senses such as the visual and auditory systems work together to present information. The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of temporal contiguity, a principle of multimedia learning, while displaying images and narration of fruits and vegetables to increase memorization of content. 21 preschool students between the ages of 4 and 5 from Arizona State University’s Child Study Lab were recruited for the purpose of the study. Students received one of two versions of a short video while inside the classroom. The two videos displayed information either at the same time or successively. Children’s knowledge was assessed with a drag and drop categorization game. The findings show there were no significant differences between the two conditions. Future studies should consider a longer training period when developing multimedia learning technology to ensure content is retained.

Previous research has shown that perceptual illusions can enhance golf putting performance, and the effect has been explained as being due to enhanced expectancies. The present study was designed to further understand this effect by measuring putting in 3 additional variations to the Ebbinghaus illusion and by measuring putting kinematics. Nineteen ASU students with minimal golf experience putted to the following illusion conditions: a target, a target surrounded by small circles, a target surrounded by large circles, a target surrounded by both large and small circles, no target surrounded by small circles and no target surrounded by large circles. Neither perceived target size nor putting error was significantly affected by the illusion conditions. Time to peak speed was found to be significantly greater for the two conditions with no target, and lowest for the condition with the target by itself. Suggestions for future research include having split groups with and without perceived performance feedback as well as general performance feedback. The size conditions utilized within this study should continue to be explored as more consistent data could be collected within groups.

ASU’s Software Engineering (SER) program adequately prepares students for what happens after they become a developer, but there is no standard for preparing students to secure a job post-graduation in the first place. This project creates and executes a supplemental curriculum to prepare students for the technical interview process. The trial run of the curriculum was received positively by study participants, who experienced an increase in confidence over the duration of the workshop.

Across a wide variety of sports, our visual abilities have been proven to profoundly impact performance. Numerous studies have examined the effects of visual training in athletes and have found supporting evidence that performance can be enhanced through vision training. The present case study aimed to expand on research in the field of stroboscopic visual training. To do so, twelve softball players, half novice and half expert, took part in this study. Six underwent a four-week stroboscopic training program and six underwent a four-week non-stroboscopic training program. The quantitative data collected in this case study showed that training group (stroboscopic vs. non-stroboscopic) and skill level (novice vs expert) of each softball player were significant factors that contributed to how much their fielding performance increased. Qualitative data collected in this study support these findings as well as players’ subjective reports that their visual and perceptual skills had increased. Players trained in the stroboscopic group reported that they felt like they could “focus” on the ball better and “predict” where the ball would be. Future research should examine more participants across a longer training period and determine if more data would yield even greater significance for stroboscopic training.

The current study investigated the task of coloring static images with multimedia learning to determine the impact on retention and transfer scores. After watching a multimedia video on the formation of lightning participants were assigned to either a passive, active, or constructive condition based on the ICAP Framework. Participants colored static images on key concepts from the video, passive condition observed the images, active condition colored the images by applying the concepts, and the constructive condition colored the images by generating new ideas and concepts. The study did not support the hypothesis that the constructive condition would have increased retention and transfer scores over the active and passive conditions. The mental effort measures did not show significance among groups in relation to learning but perception measures did show an increase in participants enjoyment and engagement. Since the coloring craze has become more accepted for adults then could coloring be a way to increase participants learning through engagement.

Multimedia educational technologies have increased their presence in traditional and online classrooms over the course of the previous decade. These tools hold value and can promote positive learning outcomes but are reliant on students’ degree of cognitive engagement and self-regulation. When students are not cognitively engaged or have low self-regulation capabilities, their interaction with the technology becomes less impactful because of decreased learning outcomes. Building or altering technologies to cognitively engage students is costly and timely; the present study investigates if introducing higher agency roles, to change the role of the student, increases learning outcomes. Specifically, this study investigates if higher agency roles of a designer or teacher enhances cognitive engagement and improves learning when compared to the conventional role of a learner. Improved learning outcomes were observed from the pretest to posttest for the learner, designer, and teacher role. Participants engaged with higher agency roles did not demonstrate more growth from pretest to posttest when compared to the control group, but participants in the teacher role outperformed those in the designer role. Additionally, reading ability did not impact learning gains across groups. While students who engaged with higher agency roles did not achieve greater learning outcomes than students in the control group, results indicate a learning effect across groups. Results of this study suggest that it was underpowered. Further research is needed to determine the extent of the impact that higher agency roles have on learning outcomes.