Understanding the Effect of Animation and its Speed on User Enjoyment

abstract: Providing the user with good user experience is complex and involves multiple factors. One of the factors that can impact the user experience is animation. Animation can be tricky to get right and needs to be understood by designers. Animations that are too fast might not accomplish anything and having them too slow could slow the user down causing them to get frustrated. This study explores the subject of animation and its speed by trying to answer the following questions – 1) Do people notice whether an animation is present 2) Does animation affect the enjoyment of a transition? and 3) If animation does affect enjoyment, what is the effect of different animation speeds? The study was conducted using 3 prototypes of an application to order bottled water in which the transitions between different brands of bottled water were animated at 0ms, 300ms and 650ms. A survey was conducted to see if the participants were able to spot any difference between the prototypes and if they did, which one they preferred. It was found that most people did not recognize any difference between the prototypes. Even people who recognized a difference between the prototypes did not have any preference of speed.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 201

Design Strategies for Playful Technologies to Support Light-intensity Physical Activity in the Workplace

Moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity has an established preventative role in obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. However recent evidence suggests that sitting time affects health negatively independent of whether adults meet prescribed physical activity guidelines. Since many of us spend long hours daily sitting in front of a host of electronic screens, this is cause for concern. In this paper, we describe a set of three prototype digital games created for encouraging light-intensity physical activity during short breaks at work. The design of these kinds of games is a complex process that must consider motivation strategies, interaction methodology, usability and ludic aspects. We present design guidelines for technologies that encourage physical activity in the workplace that we derived from a user evaluation using the prototypes. Although the design guidelines can be seen as general principles, we conclude that they have to be considered differently for different workplace cultures and workspaces. Our study was conducted with users who have some experience playing casual games on their mobile devices and were able and willing to increase their physical activity.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Video: http://living.media.mit.edu/projects/see-saw

Development of a Mobile Customer Application for Dry Cleaning Services

While machines are getting better at simulating human behavior it has become more common with the use of avatars and conversational text in mobile applications. These are used in order to induce a reflectively positive experience for the user, possibly making the user choose that application in favor of another. The balance between developing a too playful application and an uninteresting one is hard to achieve. This master thesis project aimed to do exactly that while developing a customer application for dry cleaning services in the U.S. By using an incremental and iterative agile software development method for a single person project, project goals and deadlines were met. This thesis researched use of personality in modern mobile applications while developing the application for Apple’s iOS using the Swift programming language. After research and development, a usability test was conducted in order to evaluate application design, use of avatar and conversational text as well as navigation and transitions. The avatar was labeled as too disturbing for the users while the conversational text enhanced the user experience. The project resulted in a finished prototype for ordering dry cleaning without the avatar. The use of more refined avatars in applications like this might still be feasible. Users demand a delightful experience from their applications and it is extremely important for developers to listen to this demand. If not, users could be lost to rivals.Mobile applications are becoming civilized enough to simulate human behaviour in the form of characters and emotional text. Programmers need to incorporate personality into their applications to enhance user experience and stay ahead of competitors. Home deliveries within dry cleaning services are increasingly popular in the U.S. During this thesis an app for iPhone was developed that enables users to buy these services and overview the process in a personal matter

Push Yourself a Bit Harder: The Impacts of Force-based Gestures on Consumer Decisiveness and Self-Regulation

The emergence of force-based gestures (e.g., peek and pop) brings more functionalities to mobile interaction. Although it is believed that peek and pop could facilitate user navigation experience, the psychological and behavioral effects of force-based gestures remain unexplored. This study aims to investigate whether and how force-based gestures (gentle tap vs. hard press) influence mobile consumer decision making. Drawing on Embodied Cognition Theory and Mobile Application Usability literature, we propose that hard press (compared with gentle tap) could make consumers more decisive and thus lead to faster decisions; moreover, hard press (compared with gentle tap) could also facilitate willpower summoning and thus enhance consumer self-control. We also propose that these effects are contingent on visual responsiveness. Accordingly, a 2 by 2 lab experiment is designed. Potential theoretical contributions, practical implications as well as future research directions are discussed

Animations in Cross-Platform Mobile Applications: An Evaluation of Tools, Metrics and Performance

Along with the proliferation of high-end and performant mobile devices, we find that the inclusion of visually animated user interfaces are commonplace, but that research on their performance is scarce. Thus, for this study, eight mobile apps have been developed for scrutiny and assessment to report on the device hardware impact and penalties caused by transitions and animations, with an emphasis on apps generated using cross-platform development frameworks. The tasks we employ for animation performance measuring, are those of (i) a complex animation consisting of multiple elements, (ii) the opening sequence of a side menu navigation pattern, and (iii) a transition animation during in-app page navigation. We employ multiple performance profiling tools, and scrutinize metrics including frames per second (FPS), CPU usage, device memory usage and GPU memory usage, all to uncover the impact caused by executing transitions and animations. We uncover important differences in device hardware utilization during animations across the different cross-platform technologies employed. Additionally, Android and iOS are found to differ greatly in terms of memory consumption, CPU usage and rendered FPS, a discrepancy that is true for both the native and cross-platform apps. The findings we report are indeed factors contributing to the complexity of app development.Animations in Cross-Platform Mobile Applications: An Evaluation of Tools, Metrics and PerformanceacceptedVersio

The Effect of Interface Animations on the Usability of Accommodation Booking Applications

Animatsioonide kasutamine kasutajaliidese disainis kogub aina rohkem populaarsust. Kasutajaliidese animatsioonide mõju veebilehtede kasutajamugavusele on küll palju uuritud, kuid mõju mobiilirakendustele on teadmata. Selle bakalaureusetöö eesmärgiks on uurida kasutajaliidese animatsioonide mõju majusutasutuste broneerimise mobiilirakenduste kasutajamugavusele. Antud töö käigus uuritakse nii üldist kasutajamugavust kui ka tõhusust ja mõjusust.The usage of animations in interface design is gaining more and more popularity. While the effect of interface animation on the usability of web sites is relatively studied, there is a significant gap in researching the effect of animation on the usability of mobile applications. The purpose of this thesis is to study the effect of animation on usability in accommodation booking applications. It investigates the general usability as well as two usability´s performance metrics effectiveness and efficiency separately

Wearable performance

This is the post-print version of the article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & FrancisWearable computing devices worn on the body provide the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st Century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasises not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. 'Wearable performance' briefly surveys the context for wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes display and performative/interfacial garments. It then focuses on the authors' experiments with 'design in motion' and digital performance, examining prototyping at the DAP-Lab which involves transdisciplinary convergences between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies and digital animation. The concept of an 'evolving' garment design that is materialised (mobilised) in live performance between partners originates from DAP Lab's work with telepresence and distributed media addressing the 'connective tissues' and 'wearabilities' of projected bodies through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing). Such notions of wearability are applied both to the immediate sensory processing on the performer's body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment. Wearable computing devices worn on the body provide the potential for digital interaction in the world. A new stage of computing technology at the beginning of the 21st Century links the personal and the pervasive through mobile wearables. The convergence between the miniaturisation of microchips (nanotechnology), intelligent textile or interfacial materials production, advances in biotechnology and the growth of wireless, ubiquitous computing emphasises not only mobility but integration into clothing or the human body. In artistic contexts one expects such integrated wearable devices to have the two-way function of interface instruments (e.g. sensor data acquisition and exchange) worn for particular purposes, either for communication with the environment or various aesthetic and compositional expressions. 'Wearable performance' briefly surveys the context for wearables in the performance arts and distinguishes display and performative/interfacial garments. It then focuses on the authors' experiments with 'design in motion' and digital performance, examining prototyping at the DAP-Lab which involves transdisciplinary convergences between fashion and dance, interactive system architecture, electronic textiles, wearable technologies and digital animation. The concept of an 'evolving' garment design that is materialised (mobilised) in live performance between partners originates from DAP Lab's work with telepresence and distributed media addressing the 'connective tissues' and 'wearabilities' of projected bodies through a study of shared embodiment and perception/proprioception in the wearer (tactile sensory processing). Such notions of wearability are applied both to the immediate sensory processing on the performer's body and to the processing of the responsive, animate environment