Serious games have a great potential for training and educating people in novel and engaging ways. However, little empirical research has been done on the effectiveness of serious games, and although early findings do point to a moderately positive direction, even less is known about why some games succeed in effectively educating while others do…

Describes the mechanics of information exchange between the computer and the user of, e.g., a word processing editor. The importance of user orientation, how it is affected by different types of interfaces, and space aids for orienting users in menu-driven or branching programs that present output in page format are discussed. (MBR)