Use of animation? Tread warily.

[Geoff Hart <Geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

I'm coming in late on this conversation, so I don't know the
original context. The one "hard" piece of evidence, pro or
con, that I've heard about the usefulness of animations was
reported by Jared Spool a couple years ago. In his testing, he
found that "talking head" videos in online help improved user
perceptions of the quality of the help system, but _decreased_
the performance of those who used the help. I'm not aware
that Jared's study was replicated (either in other audiences or
multiple times for the same audience). A few folks from User
Interface Engineering participate in techwr-l, and can
probably provide a better description of the study
methodology and results.

That evidence, plus my own broad but shallow reading in
cognitive psych, leads me to a broad generalisation, with the
caveat that by speaking broadly, I'm overstating the case to
make a point. The broader generalisation? The more signals
that are vying for the viewer's attention, the less of that
attention is left for the viewer to devote to the task at hand,
which is processing information (e.g., in online help or on a
Web page). There are a very few distinct situations in which
animation is truly useful:
- if animation is the primary purpose of the presentation (e.g.,
solely to entertain, as in the presentation of animated cartoons
or "webcams" on the Web)
- if you're targeting an audience that won't pay _any_
attention unless you've got lots of "sound and fury, signifying
nothing" to make them look twice (e.g., those who consider
Wired to represent the pinnacle of good design).
- if the animation itself contains useful information that
cannot easily be presented any other way (e.g., time-lapse
photography of a plant developing from a seed, the precise
flow of motion through a martial-arts kata)

In just about every other case, animation is gratuitous, adds
little or nothing to the act of communication, and more likely
detracts from the success of the communication by distracting
the viewer from the information being communicated. There's
also a minor ethical dimension to incorporating animations in
Web pages: the larger files slow downloads, and use up
bandwidth and server cycles that could be better spent
providing useful information. This is yet another example of
the "tragedy of the commons" (i.e., a "free" shared resource
such as Internet bandwidth becomes seriously compromised
when everyone uses it as if they were the only users).

Despite how strongly I've stated these opinions, I do concede
that graphics can serve important roles. But use them
judiciously and with conscious knowledge of their purpose,
effectiveness, and limitations. Right now, the state of Web
animations is about parallel to the "ransom note created from
random newspaper clippings" typography that accompanied
early desktop publishing.

--Geoff Hart @8^{)}     Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

Roberts: "The text tells us that he was at least 30. It's a little hard to
think of him as an abused son." Kornstein: "Well, it may show that he was
learning disabled if he was still in school." Roberts: "It just shows that
he was studying law." (From: The Elsinore Appeal: People v. Hamlet)

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