Although opinions differ (e.g., Clark, 1983;Mayer, 1997), limited evidence suggests that some media are better than others at communicating certain kinds of information (e.g., Najjar, 1996b). For example, when a learner needs to remember a small amount of verbal information for a short period of time, information that is presented via the auditory This paper discusses principles of educational multimedia user interface design. The purpose of these principles is to maximize the learning effectiveness of multimedia applications. The principles are based on the results of studies in psychology, computer science, instructional design, and graphics design. The principles help user interface designers make decisions about the learning materials, learners, tasks that the learners perform, and tests for measuring learning performance.

One of many opportunities afforded by the Internet is that of e-commerce, which includes transactions between businesses and customers, as well as within and between businesses. For companies to take full advantage of the potential offered by the Web, it is essential that their sites be prepared and organized in a highly usable manner. This often is not the case, as shown, for example, by the finding that users looking for an item on e-commerce Web sites cannot find it 36% of the time [6]. Companies that are able to organize and structure information in a way that promotes efficient and effective retrieval will save time and money, promote customer satisfaction and continued business, and gain an advantage over their competitors. Consequently, effective content design is crucial to the success of e-commerce sites. To help ensure that users' interactions with these sites are successful, the primary goals of content preparation should be to determine: • What information is needed and how to elicit it • How to structure and organize this information • Which methods are best for retrieving the information, and • How the information should be presented to the user.

To remain competitive, e-commerce user interfaces need to evolve as customer behaviors and technologies change. This paper describes several new user interface features that designers may want to add to their e-commerce offerings. The features include social media connections, storefronts on social media sites, automated product recommendations, dynamic product customization, dynamic product contextual simulation, flash sales, and mobile commerce.

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