This paper discusses the progress we have made in document design and suggests some of the issues remaining to be addressed, particularly in relation to multimedia documents. In order to sharpen these issues, it reports three empirical studies of the varying effects that graphics in electronic documents have on readers and the reading process in different contexts. It concludes by discussing how to represent our growing knowledge about the effects of design features, and suggests that such an information resource is more usefully thought of as a "map" to be consulted than a recipe to be followed. The varied factors that must be taken into account when reaching design decisions may mean that the "map" will need to be an interactive document in order to be a useful tool for designers scaling the heights in the online century ahead.
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