Abstract. Although recorded demonstrations (screen capture animations with narration) have become a popular form of instruction for user interfaces, little work has been done to describe guidelines for their design. Based on our experience in several projects, we offer a starting set of guidelines for the design of recorded demonstrations. Technical guidelines encourage users to keep file sizes small, strive for universal usability, and ensure user control etc. and provide tips to achieve those goals. Content guidelines include: create short demonstrations that focus on tasks, highlight each step with auditory and visual cues, synchronize narration and animation carefully, and create demonstrations with a clear beginning, middle, and end. 1.

The principles of readability are in every style manual. Readability formulas are in every word processor. What is missing is the research and theory on which they stand.

in 1989, of television in mobilizing public opinion at home and abroad about the attempted Russian coup in 1993, and of the Internet in providing a news link for Serbian dissidents in 1996 when the government shut down their radio station. True, personal travel to distant points still requires more than a day, but information technology brings the joys and sorrows of the entire globe into our living rooms and offices every day. When the world was larger, our sense of who "we" were was limited to the family, the tribe, the village, or the nation. Now that the world is smaller, "we" must be more inclusive. Today, "we" includes people of all genders, races, and religions on all continents. Therefore, technical communicators---like everyone else---must deal with the reality that in a shrinking world, we indulge our prejudices at a considerable price. Even absent philanthropic values, the pragmatist realizes that business does not thrive in a climate of ill will. We must make the customer h

dents in 1996 when the government shut down their radio station. True, personal travel to distant points still requires more than a day, but information technology brings the joys and sorrows of the entire globe into our living rooms and offices every day. When the world was larger, our sense of who "we" were was limited to the family, the tribe, the village, or the nation. Now that the world is smaller, "we" must be more inclusive. Today, "we" includes people of all genders, races, and religions on all continents. Therefore, technical communicators---like everyone else---must deal with the reality that in a shrinking world, we indulge our prejudices at a considerable price. Even absent philanthropic values, the pragmatist realizes that business does not thrive in a climate of ill will. We must make the customer happy, satisfy our audience, to achieve success in our craft. And we cannot do that if what we communicate is offensive to our audience. 2 Copyright 1998 by George F. Hayhoe.

This article discusses three key areas of visual communication we address in user interfaces (UIs): . Information access and navigation . Icon recognition . Visual appeal or "look-and-feel" The article uses five case histories to demonstrate how usability research has helped the authors evaluate the quality of visual communication in navigation, icon recognition, and look-and-feel. It describes some of the research methodology the authors use, with examples from the case histories. For each of the three topic areas, we discuss the lessons we learned from the case histories about both usability testing methodology and visual communication guidelines. We mention, but do not concentrate on, related topics such as visual clutter. The case histories are all from laboratory-based usability testing with representatives of the target audiences. Many other usability research methods collect valuable data and inform design insights---especially field methods such as contextual inquiry. However, because we are comparing and discussing the results of several studies in this article, we have restricted our examples to one method. The case histories still illustrate a wide variety of test designs