The effect of figures in CCS communication

• Information materials containing illustrations perform better than text-only material.
• Incorporation of mental models into illustrations of CCS does not aid comprehension.
• Suboptimal illustrations do not interfere with comprehension.
• Strong misconceptions should be addressed explicitly rather than implicitly.

Illustrations are an essential part of most CCS communication materials. This article looks at the role of illustrations in communication and education in general, and in CCS communication in particular. First, literature on multimedia learning is reviewed and general guidelines for designing graphical displays deduced. This is followed by a discussion of relevant mental models and their possible implementation in pictorial form. The authors then report on an interview study in which illustrations with various implementations of CCS mental models are compared. No major differences were found regarding understanding of CCS between the different illustrations. Graphical displays alone are not powerful enough to implicitly correct typical misconceptions about CCS. Such misconceptions should be stated explicitly, along with their correction.