Author(s)

Idyawati H., E. A. Seman & Y. Yusak

Abstract

e-Commerce websites that are not structured or planned can convey the wrong message to users at best and at worse are the cause of fatigue and stress. A poorly-constructed interface will repel users, lose sales, do damage to a company’s brand, and simply become an irrelevance to the business. An excess of visual, text and/or audio information burdens the user, who in turn will discard the underlying messages that the site is attempting to convey. The success of a well designed e-commerce websites can be measured through the experience of a user, and the information the user imparts from the event. The aim, therefore, of any multimedia designer especially a persuasive e-commerce website designer is to understand the needs of any potential user to effectively convey the central themes of the design and promote comprehension of the services/products/information on display. Keywords: paradigm shift, cognitive model, human information processing, comprehension, create creativity, psychological knowledge, multi-sensory interaction. 1 Introduction This paper is intended to create a tool, which is called the Multimedia Design Assistant Tool (MDAT) which consists of Cognitive Advisor Tool (CAT) to shift designer’s paradigm in promoting a persuasive e-commerce website. The tool reflects a designer’s perception of how to utilize multimedia and hypermedia in such a way that they are optimising the aesthetic characteristics of a particular media. The tool itself will be created in a user-centred and interactive manner to ensure that designers are actively engaged in the environment rather than passively receiving and storing knowledge from teachers and textbooks.

Keywords

paradigm shift, cognitive model, human information processing, comprehension, create creativity, psychological knowledge, multi-sensory interaction.