Interaction and animation in health infographics: A study of graphic presentation and content comprehension

Abstract

In the digital environment, newspapers widely use animated and interactive infographics to explain relevant topics such as health information. However, technical features like interaction, animation, and sound can affect readers’ comprehension. We address this issue through an analytical and empirical study verifying the effects of animation and interaction on the understanding of health infographics. The procedures are described as follow. A sample of Brazilian newspaper health infographics was analyzed to identify the graphic characteristics of animation, interaction, and presentation of verbal information (written text and audio narration). An infographic representative of the sample was selected to be tested with 50 participants to verify the influence of animation, interaction and verbal presentation of information regarding content understanding, based on the results of the analytical study. The results we found are not conclusive yet, but in this study we identified that the health infographics of the selected sample do not follow the recommendations of prior literature, leading us to question the positive effect of interaction when merged with animation and the negative effect of on-screen text combined with animation or static images.