The Major Areas of Multimedia Use, Including:

Education and Training:

• Participants are students and teachers

• Multimedia can be used in education as its interactivity is effective in helping people learn

  • Multimedia education requires good navigation options, sufficient detail and range of information

• Multimedia is interactive → users control learning by selecting content they want to learn

  • Range of media types + interactivity makes learning more engaging, interesting and effective during teaching
  • Training can be conducted whenever convenient
    • Cost effective and allows remote educations

  Pros	Cons
  Increased engagement and interactivity	Technical difficulties and equipment failures
  More effective in conveying complex information	Can be costly to produce high-quality multimedia
  Can be used for remote or distance learning	Can be distracting and reduce attention span
  Can provide real-life simulations and scenarios	Requires access to technology and internet
  Can be customized to individual learning styles	Limited opportunities for collaboration and group work
  Allows for self-paced learning	May not be accessible to learners with disabilities

Leisure and Entertainment:

• Multimedia is effective in leisure/entertainment due to its dynamic display and interactivity
  • Participants can be all ages/abilities (as multimedia can be adapted for different scenarios)
• Has more visual images, video, animation and sound over text, making it more interesting and dynamic
• IT used: audio speakers, CD, DVD player, etc
  • Multimedia is highly interactive/always changing, thus more engaging
    • Different data types lets product be effective in creating different effects (sound can evoke certain emotions) making it more entertaining

Information Provision, such as information kiosks:

• Multimedia allows for an easy way to display information, due to interactivity
  • Allows users to gain specific information about what they are looking for
    • Example: Information kiosks Westfield showing where stores are compared to a brochure that displays the location of every single store which you have to look through laboriously
  • Extremely effective due to its interactivity, that allows features such as searching keywords
    • Can be displayed through various data types so that users can better understand information

Virtual reality and simulations, such as flight simulator

• Multimedia when effectively used in a virtual reality environment, enables user to interact with an environment, without requiring them to be in any danger, or spend money to travel there, etc.
  • Creates a situation that looks somewhat real, so that users can test their skills and learn in a simulated environment
    • Often users are specialists who require specific training, such as pilots (as they need to train in the conditions a plane might go through without the cost and damage from a plane)
  • IT is often specialised, with a similar user interface to the actual scenario. Same buttons and controls in a plane for example
    • Example of IT used: Goggles, head displays, gloves, bodysuits used to simulate the situation
    • System is highly interactive

Combined areas such as educational games

• Multimedia systems can also be used for combined areas such as educational games
• Multimedia combines entertainment with education.
  • Multimedia and display effects make it interactive and fun, which then makes them want to continue the game and they learn through the content in the game
  • E.g. Mathletics

Advances in technology which are influencing multimedia development

Increased storage capacity allowing multimedia products to be stored at high resolutions (storing and retrieving/processing)

• More primary/secondary storage → multimedia has more detail/higher resolution
  • Hence, Better quality products available
  • Can have better quality images in multimedia as there is enough storage for the large amounts of data needed