USING GRAPHICS AND ANIMATION IN instructional and referential pieces can either add a great degree of clarity to your content, or a good deal of confusion, depending on how you use them. Spending some time on your creation of graphics and asking yourself some important questions can significantly increase the effectiveness of the illustrations in your work.

Using graphics in instructional and referential material can be a tricky task. Finding the right graphic to represent your textual content and to convey your message accurately is a more difficult goal than it seems. Asking a few questions can streamline the graphic development process.

First, you should ask yourself if a graphic is even necessary to clarify your point. Many designers throw graphics around needlessly to simply dress up the page. Doing so distracts the reader and makes your instruction less effective.

Secondly, you should ask yourself what message your graphic needs to convey, and what kind of graphic does so most efficiently. Information can be displayed in many different ways, and it is your task to find which display represents your meaning most clearly.

Take, for instance, the graphic below. Space shuttle engineers who designed the infamous Challenger used 13 graphics and charts—including this graphic—to pursuade NASA officials not to launch in low temperatures, for fear that it would greatly compromise the stability of the shuttle by causing O-ring resiliency failure (which increases exponentially with cooling). NASA declared the findings inconclusive, and said nothing the engineers presented linked low temperatures to O-ring failure.

On January 28, 1986, the morning after the decision to launch in spite of the engineers findings, the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, due to O-ring failure. Maybe if the graphics had been more convincing—such as the alternate graphic below (roll over the graphic to view)—the catastrophy might have been avoided.

These graphics are a perfect example of how important visual representations can be in presentations or instructional material. Your graphics may not have people's lives depending on their ability to efficiently represent information, but nonetheless it is important. These two graphics essentially display the same information, but the second displays it more clearly.

This image is an example of what Challenger engineers presented to NASA.

Roll over this image with your mouse to view a picture that conveys the engineers point more efficiently.

Using animation in instructional or referential material must also be done carefully. Animation, especially animated gifs that load and run when the page loads, tend to draw the reader's attention immediately. This can be good if that is your intention, but if it isn't you just drew your audience away from what you did want them to notice.

Whenever possible, use animation that has controls, or requires an action from the reader to play, such as a flash animation. Your audience is more likely to only give the animation their attention when they are instructed to do so in the text.

It is also good practice to only use animation when necessary. Animation is excellent for the "wow factor" of web sites, but in instructional material, it should be kept simple, to the point, and only used when other methods won't get the point across to the reader as effectively.

This illustration provides both information about the parts that

comprise the suspension system, and reference as to how those parts fit together.

This illustration is a good example of how animation is used well. The informational and referential material it displays is conveyed more efficiently than using just text and a still image, and it does not present a distraction to the reader since it doesn't play until the button is clicked.

To conclude, the use of graphics and animation in instructional material can add a great deal of value to your presented material. Ask yourself the important questions before you design your graphics and animations, and make your instruction as efficient as possible.

Edward Tufte is a leader in the arena of information design. He presents a wide array of seminars and courses, and has authored several books on graphical representations of information. For more information on his work, click here to visit his site.

Tufte, E. R. (1997). Visual Explanations. Connecticut: Graphics Press.


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Authored by Adam DeFields