Fragmented Verbal Dysfunction: Interactive Communication Design for Language Awareness in Digital Media

Abstract

Social media and short-video platforms have reshaped everyday communication through fast, fragmented, and highly visual information flows. In daily online interaction, many young users increasingly rely on internet slang, emojis, abbreviations, and memes to complete expression. These forms are efficient and emotionally direct, but they may also reduce attention to sentence structure, semantic richness, and reflective language organization. This paper takes Cognitive Load Theory as the main theoretical entry point. It understands "text aphasia" not as a medical diagnosis, but as a cultural metaphor for weakened textual expression caused by continuous exposure to high-frequency digital information. Cognitive Load Theory suggests that limited working-memory resources can be overloaded by unnecessary or excessive information processing. Related media studies also show that mediated message processing is constrained by limited cognitive capacity, while recent short-video research links information fragmentation, scroll immersion, attention difficulty, working-memory disruption, cognitive fatigue, and executive-control decline with contemporary platform use.This paper presents Fragmented Verbal Dysfunction, an interactive communication design project for the AHFE track Human Factors in Communication of Design. The project aims to make the abstract decline of textual expression visible, understandable, and personally relevant. Its design system includes conceptual posters, medical-record-inspired visual interfaces, deconstructive typography, dynamic mosaic effects, public-space applications, peripheral objects, a QR-code entrance, and an H5 memory-test game. These components form a communication pathway: users first encounter a visual warning in public or printed media, then enter a mobile interaction, and finally receive a diagnosis-like reflective experience about their own language habits.The design method combines visual metaphor, deconstructive typography, and gamified interaction. Fragmented typography and pixel distortion are used to simulate the collapse of semantic order under information overload. Medical images of the brain, mouth, and heart are used as embodied metaphors that connect language expression with cognition, speech, and emotion. The H5 game adopts a simple elimination mechanism inspired by gamification design, inviting users to identify, select, and reconstruct symbolic information. In this process, the audience shifts from passive viewing to active participation in the "diagnosis" and recovery of language awareness.A pilot user evaluation was organized with university students who frequently use social media and short-video applications. The evaluation focused on five aspects: visual comprehension, emotional impact, interaction engagement, memory retention, and reflection on personal communication habits. Preliminary feedback indicates that visual disturbance combined with game-based interaction can attract attention more effectively than static posters alone. Participants were more likely to recognize their dependence on simplified digital expressions after using the interactive system. This project therefore connects cognitive load, visual metaphor, and interactive communication design, showing how communication design can function not only as information delivery, but also as a tool for cognitive awareness in fragmented digital culture.

Keywords: Communication Design, Cognitive Load Theory, Digital Media, Gamification, Interactive Design, Language Awareness, Text Aphasia, Visual Metaphor

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1008070