Enhancing Children’s Road Safety Awareness through Safety Features of Interactive Digital Media Applications in Malaysia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24191/idealogy.v11i2.914Abstract
Children remain one of the most vulnerable groups of road users in Malaysia, yet road safety education for this age group continues to rely largely on passive, print-based instruction. Interactive digital media applications offer a more engaging alternative, but the visual construction of such applications has received limited analytical attention. This study analyses how design principles and safety sign principles are applied in interactive digital media applications intended to build children’s road safety awareness. A qualitative visual content analysis was conducted on six purposively selected applications, comprising mobile applications and web-based platforms containing child-directed road safety content. Each application was coded against six design principle attribute composition, hierarchy, balance, contrast, proportion and tone and three safety sign attributes colour coding, pictograms and typography. Applications combining clear visual organisation with standardised colour coding and pictograms present safety information in a form that is more legible and more readily distinguished at the interface level. As the study examines design facts rather than child users, the findings describe design characteristics consistent with established multimedia learning principles rather than measured learning outcomes. These will contribute a coding framework for the visual evaluation of children’s road safety applications and identifies design inconsistencies that warrant attention in future development work.
Keywords: Children, Road Safety, Safety features, Digital media, Interactive media, Interactive Digital Media Applications (IDMA)
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