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The paper reports two studies concerning attention to and comprehension of Multimedia presentations. The MM sequence used was taken from a commercially produced CD-ROM, 'The Etiology of Cancer'. First, an eye tracking study of the presentation is reported. A second study was then cortductekl ml the memorisation of the materials used in the eye tracking study. The results of the studies are used to propose guidelines to improve design of MM presentations.

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This paper explores how 'contact points' or co-references between an animation and text should be designed in web pages. Guidelines are derived from an eye tracking study. A dynamic HTML authoring tool is described which supports these requirements. An evaluation study is reported in which four designs of animation in web pages were tested. KEYWORDS Web Page Design, Authoring Tools THE PROBLEMMore and more web pages contain text and animated media, yet little work has addressed how to effectively design such combinations. Existing guidelines give unfocussed and contradictory advice which encourages the use of animation while warning that it can have unspecified, detrimental effects. For instance, Nielsen [3] concludes that animated web pages are useful for providing 'enriching graphical representations', but warns 'unconstrained use of multimedia results in user interfaces that confuse users and make it harder for them to understand the information.' This paper introduces the notion of 'contact points', or coreferences between text and animation as a solution to effectively combining the two types of media. Contact points are places in the text where the content needs to be related with the animation. Contact points allow the viewer to integrate the content of the text with a referent in the animation eg for details of an object's appearance, or how to perform an action. The key issues for design concern how to form a 'contact point' : l How to provide linking references and synchronisation between text and visual streams. l How to ensure that the message thread can be followed between the text and visual media.

The paper summarises empirical research that led to guidelines for directing the viewing/reading sequence in multimedia presentations. A method for scripting or evaluating multimedia presentations is described and illustrated with a case study. A design advisor tool based on this work is used to critique a sample MM presentation. A tool validation study with novice designers is reported.