Lecturer in Design

UCOL: Universal College of Learning

p.andrews@ucol.ac.nz

Spokes characters online - do they help or hinder

Paper

Humanising the online learning experience through animated comic character as the site presenter. The web, with consumer accessibility now close to one billion (eMarketer, 2005), still only offers limited download speeds for the user seeking greater infotainment based content, even with the implementation of broadband technology. This presents an ideal platform for the drawn spokes character presenter as compared to digital video due to smaller file sizes. The drawn character can visually align with a service or products core function, along with the capability to present information through the medium of storytelling. Putting this premise to the test, an industry was selected due to a lack of awareness as to what it actually does. A semi interactive character was designed and compared to non-character design presenting the same information within a focus group setting.

Presentation notes (1.7 MB PDF)

Highest qualification: Master of Design (Massey Wellington). Graduating from the Wellington School of Design in 1981, I worked within the design/advertising industry (New Zealand and London). A large proportion of my work centered on comic style character development (primary illustration based design for print). The purpose of the character creation aimed at humanising information. Moving into a full-time educational position at UCOL (1998), I become interested in narrative in relation to web communication - essentially how character and storytelling can add to the learner's user experience.