Joyful infographics: added educational value? : Exploring the impact of emotion-driven design strategies on learning

Abstract

This thesis examines the impact of emotion-driven strategies on multimedia learning among highly educated individuals. Three of Nigel Holmes’ criteria for creating joyful infographics- drawings, visual prosody and human presence- are tested for their ability to support learning. Through a comparative study in the form of online surveys, the thesis investigates and measures the difference in retention and transfer performances between participants from treatment and control groups. The results show that the three features positively impacted transfer performances but had no observable impact on retention performances. Other observations included that the presence of faces itself directly and positively impacted transfer performances. A positive but indirect impact was also noticeable from the combination of the three features as they encouraged engagement with information beyond the infographic’s visual aid but with the text information provided by the infographic.