We attached different electron donors of phenyl, anthryl, and alkylamino moieties, to electron acceptor naphthalenediimide (NDI) to construct compact electron donor/acceptor dyads. The purpose is to study the effect of electron coupling (the magnitude is the matrix element, V-DA) on the photophysical properties of UV-vis absorption, fluorescence emission, especially spin-orbit charge transfer intersystem crossing. We found that the magnitude of V-DA depends on the electron donating strength of the aryl moieties (V-DA = 0.22-0.55 eV), as well as the molecular conformation, based on steady state and time-resolved transient absorption spectroscopies. We also found that electron coupling does not show the add-up (or synergetic) effect. Solvent polarity-dependent intersystem crossing (ISC) was observed for the dyad/triads and singlet oxygen quantum yield decreases in polar solvents. Femtosecond transient absorption results indicate that the charge separation (CS) for 9-An-NDI-NH occurs on time scale of 0.83 ps (in toluene) or 0.71 ps (in acetonitrile). The charge recombination (CR) process (50 ps in toluene) produces triplet state with Phi(ISC) = 19%. The triplet state lifetime is up to 22 mu s. This result indicates that orthogonal geometry for a compact electron donor/acceptor does not lead to efficient ISC via CR Other factors such as the energy gap between the CS state and triplet state also determine the ISC efficiency.