Emotional Design for Educational Multimedia: A Mini-Review

Emotional design features can be incorporated into educational multimedia to positively influence learning outcome, emotional state, and cognitive load of learners. A systematic review of studies on emotional design for educational multimedia materials (n=32) was conducted to explicate the different qualities surrounding the multimedia interface (i.e., type of emotional design features, pacing, nature of the presentation and subject domains), as well as the emotional design effects on positive affect, cognitive load, and learning outcome. The mini-review of relevant studies reports the current state-of-the-art regarding the features and effects of emotional design for educational multimedia. Recommendations for future research are proposed in this paper.