Re: A really basic web animation question

Subject: Re: A really basic web animation question
From: Sella Rush <sellar -at- APPTECHSYS -dot- COM>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 11:34:21 -0700

Richard Danca made some valid points, which apparently got lost in the
works/doesn't work battle.

The usability of animated graphics. There is a very fine line between
interesting and annoying animated gifs. Danca's outfit, UIE, has apparently
done some usability testing on this issue. But there are some issues that
weren't clear in his post.

I think there's a difference between animation that continue to cycle as
long as the page is being viewed (annoying), and animation that only runs
initially or has a very long pause before it cycles again. All of the
points Danca made were apparently talking about continually running
animation.

If you decide to use an initial-only animation, the length of the show
becomes very important. Five seconds is too long--it's interesting the
first time someone sees it and then quickly becomes annoying. A one or two
second animation is rarely obtrusive because it's over by the time the user
can click away.

Not surprisingly, the message in this short movie must be extremely
simplistic. The idea of a single word floating up sounds like an ideal
example of a fast, non-intrusive animation that supports the message of the
text.

If you do need (or want) a longer animation, it's a good idea to give people
a stop or "skip animation" button, so they don't have to sit through the
show after the twelfth viewing.

Sella Rush
mailto:sellar -at- apptechsys -dot- com
Applied Technical Systems (ATS)
Bremerton, Washington
Developers of the CCM Database

>Really basic web animation answer: Don't do it!
>
>In nearly all the web-site usability testing we've done (a lot!) animation
>is one of the most consistent sources of user complaints.
>
>Users were most frustrated by animations that they couldn't scroll off
>the page. We saw at least one user cover the animation with her hand!
>
>Another user totally missed the answer to the task we'd assigned him
>when he masked the animated banner that would lead him to the
>answer.
>
>Other strictly ornamental graphics -- animated or static -- also seem
>to bother users. Users will wait a long time for graphics that they
>believe will be valuable to them but often get angry at graphics they
>perceive as useless.
>
>Given the limited amount of time/effort/money available for producing
>a site, we're not sure that spending it on decorative graphics is worth
>it, especially if the end result is unhappy users. Intranet users may
>suffer in silence, but internet users may bail out and never return.

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