New visual technologies in court: directions for research

Litigation is being transformed by new visual communication technologies, including videoconferencing, PowerPoint, and computer animations. Yet the effects of these visual technologies on legal decision making are largely unknown. In order to understand better the most pressing issues surrounding technology in the courtroom, psychologists, lawyers, and representatives from technology companies and funding agencies attended a Research Conference on Courtroom Technology organized by the Federal Judicial Center. The goals of the conference were to identify issues raised by courtroom uses of new technologies that could be illuminated by empirical research and to suggest designs and methods for conducting that research. This paper emerged from that conference. The authors provide an overview of considerations that should guide research in this area, including a framework that takes into account features of the technology, the audience, and the legal strategy of the user of the technology. They outline a paradigm for conducting such research, illustrate it with several possible empirical studies of varying levels of experimental and conceptual complexity, and identify directions for subsequent research.