Media Design Overview

Principles

Definition

Media design is an academic field and methodological approach that investigates the principles, processes, and structures involved in the conception, creation, and organization of media elements to shape communicative artifacts and user experiences. It examines how media forms, content, and interactions are composed and deployed across various platforms and contexts, highlighting its significance in influencing perception, interaction, and the cultural impact of mediated communication.

Ontological type

Core Methods

Applications and Contexts

Theoretical Foundations

Key developments

Key Figures

Embodied Collaborative Media era

Randy Pausch[1] stands as a leading figure in Embodied Collaborative Media during 1991–1997, with affiliations at Carnegie Mellon University[3] and University of Virginia[4]. His contribution in Virtual reality on a WIM[6] advanced immersive, room-scale interfaces that supported shared artifacts and embodied presence, which were essential to the era’s emphasis on co-located collaboration. Jakob Nielsen[2], linked to Technical University of Denmark[5], helped shape usability principles during this period that informed embodied, gaze-aware interaction and rapid prototyping expectations. His paper The usability engineering life cycle[7] outlined iterative usability methods that supported rapid evaluation and design of social presence in distributed workspaces, anchoring the era’s design vocabulary.

Engagement-Centered Media Design era

Viswanath Venkatesh [1] is associated with the University of Hong Kong [3] and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [4] during this era. In his work Determinants of Perceived Ease of Use: Integrating Control, Intrinsic Motivation, and Emotion into the Technology Acceptance Model [7], Venkatesh integrates control, intrinsic motivation, and emotion into the Technology Acceptance Model, advancing understanding of how ease of use, motivation, and affect influence user adoption, a key contribution for engagement-centered media design in this era. Lennart E. Nacke [2] is associated with the University of Waterloo [5] and the University of Saskatchewan [6] during this era. In his 2011 paper Gamification. using game-design elements in non-gaming contexts [8], Nacke articulates how gamification elements can mobilize participation and engagement, providing a design-oriented framework that underpins engagement-centered media design in this era.

Socio-Technical Immersive Evaluation era

James R. Lewis [1], with affiliations at University of Cambridge [3] and Wuhan University [4], stands out in the Socio-Technical Immersive Evaluation era. His contributions center on elevating usability evaluation for immersive media, most notably through The System Usability Scale: Past, Present, and Future [7], which provided a standardized metric to assess experiential quality in VR and guided usability governance in immersive services. Richard E. Mayer [2], with positions at University of California, Santa Barbara [5] and the University of California System [6], is a leading author in this era. His work on cognitive and affective processes for learning in immersive virtual reality [8] and on how generative learning strategies can enhance engagement in VR [9] offers important evidence for designing effective educational experiences in immersive environments amid AI-enabled media.