To our great delight and surprise, our animated Facility Manager Prototype and respective Blog article was used as demonstration and reference material at UXCamp Europe 2011. In regard of the apparent interest in the topic this article picks up the issue yet again, focusing on scientific considerations of the past years.
Indeed, animations have become an integral part in today’s modern applications, especially the iPhone and Co. Having this said, it astonishes that scientific efforts are still in fledgling stages and that the few existing approaches vaguely draw upon techniques and rules used for cartoon movies. At the same time however, choosing the wrong animation will literally paralyze a User Interface.

As described in January’s post, animations can fulfill essential purposes in user interface design. This article provides some insight into a study that has been conducted with the goal of exploring the effects of animations regarding user experience.

A prototypical sequence in user interface design proceeds from wireframes to interaction design and finally to visual design. The user interface is successively refined, starting with abstract statics, then specifying the basic dynamic aspects until finally visual specifics are added. This is compatible with the view that visual aspects of a user interface are more or less the icing on the cake – details that should only be taken care of after the foundations for a user-friendly have been laid. But this view may be flawed.