Applying an integrated communications approach to the study of user multimedia interactions

The usual measure of the effectiveness of interactive operations on multimedia texts and related tools, such as navigational buttons and pointing devices, is usability. However, usability evaluations cannot tell us how users make meanings about the text/tools and why they construct such meanings, especially if the users have different social and educational backgrounds. The integrated approach employed contributes to theories of user-multimedia interactions, particularly to usability studies. The study also provides multimedia course developers with a much richer analytical and developmental tool than is provided by usability per se.