animated transitions for empowering interactive information systems - keynote address of...

Jean VanderdoncktLouvain School of Management

Université catholique de Louvain Place des Doyens, 1 – B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

[email protected] – http://www.uclouvain.be/jean.vanderdonckt

Animated Transitions for Empowering

Interactive Information Systems

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.uclouvain.be/jean.vanderdonckt

Place des Doyens, 1 – B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium http://www.lilab.be, http://www.lilab.eu, http://www.lilab.info

Louvain Interaction Laboratory (LILab)

http://www.lilab.be/

http://www.lilab.eu/

http://www.lilab.info/

Motivations Why and what of animated transitions Basic concepts First example: web adaptation Second example: transition between UI views Conclusion and Future work

Presentation outline

Keynote address - RCIS'2012 - Valencia, May 18, 2012

Motivations Static display vs dynamic animation

Many domains of human activity are dynamic by definition Air traffic control, auctions, statistics Information systems

Information systems should have a vivid behaviour that reflects their internal processing

Some IFIP WG 13.2 Qualities Honesty = capability to reflect the internal state Observability Browsability

Why not: "behaviourability"


Motivations


Animation in general Animated transition in particular

What and why of animated transition


What: Smooth out a startling or dislocating transition with an animation that makes it feel natural.

When: Users move through a large virtual space, such as an image, spreadsheet, graph, or text document. They might be able to zoom in to varying degrees, pan or scroll, or rotate the whole thing.

Why: All of these transformations can disrupt a user's sense of where she in in the virtual space.

Zooming in and out, for instance, can throw off her spatial sense when it's done instantaneously, as can rotation and the closing of entire sections that prompt a re-layout of the screen.

Moving from an initial diagram to a final diagram Scrolling down a long page of text, when it's jumpy, can slow a reader

down. But when the shift from one state to another is continuous, it's not so bad. In other words, you can animate the transition between states so it looks smooth, not discontinuous. This helps keep the user oriented.

Related Work: PivotViewer


[www.silverlight.net/learn/pivotviewer/]

[Elmqvist et al., 2008]

Related Work: InfoVis


Related Work

• Mnemonic rendering

[Bezerianos, Dragicevic, Balakrishnan, 2008]


• Spatial Aspects

?

?

Initial Image Final Image

[Heer, Robertson, 2007]

Related Work


[Heer, Robertson,2007]

Related Work: AT in statistics


Related Work: Phosphor widgets


When to use an animated transition


Icon Name: definition

Horizontal scroll from right: to display the next element from a sequence of elements

Horizontal scroll from left: to display the previous element from a sequence of elements

Vertical scroll from bottom: to proceed with a step-by-step reasoning, a continuous subject or a long passing over, or a movement

Vertical scroll from top: to move back in a step-by-step reasoning, a continuous subject or a long passing over, or a movement

Diagonal replacement from top/bottom left corner: to go back to the previous page or screen or element

Diagonal replacement from top/bottom right corner: to move to next page or screen or UI element

Venetian blinds: to present a completely different topic, to provide a feeling of coordinated time, to convey a significant transition

Barn door close: to close a transient screen (e.g., an information screen, the About… splash screen), to close a current scene, to signify game over

Barn door open: to open a transient screen, to initiate a new step, to open a new window or UI element, to launch a game, a simulation

Iris open: to show more detailed information about a particular topic

Iris close: to show more general information about a particular topic

First example: user interface adaptation


The problem

• What happens when a GUI is adapted?

Nothing betweenEnd user disruptionCognitive perturbation


Potential solution

• Use animated transition


Potential solution

• Use animated transition to ensure a smooth transition between the initial UI and the final (adapted) UI

Initial UI before

adaptation

Final UI afteradaptation

Transient UI being

adapted

Transient UI being

adapted

Forward animation

Transient UI being

adapted

Backward animation

ith adaptationoperation

BreakSkip

RestartReturn

Transition time forith adaptation operation

… …

Total transition time for transition scenario


Related work on Animated Transitions

• Use animation– to draw the audience's attention to a single element out of several, or to alert

people to updated information– to indicate the function of a hot spot (for example, a moving hiker could

indicate the current location of Mungo Park adventurers)– to draw attention to changes from one state to another (for example,

animated map area changes could indicate deforestation over time).– to demonstrate navigation in a particular direction (for example, a simple

page-flip animation could easily distinguish forward from backward movement– to create icons for actions that can't be adequately expressed with a flat,

static picture• Permanently moving (looping) animations should rarely be included on a Web

page because they will make it very hard for your audience to concentrate on other page content. Research suggests that movement in our peripheral vision can dominate our attention. Research also indicates that moving text is harder to read than static text

[Baecker, Small, Mander ,2001]


Related work on Animated Transitions

• A number of visual effects are available. For global changes to the entire screen these are the cut, fade in and fade out, dissolve, wipe, overlap, and multiple exposure. Locally, within a region of the screen, pop on and pop off, pull down and pull up, flip, and spin can be used.

• Note: Visual effects should be used carefully. When employed too often, they will be fatiguing or even annoying or distressing to the user.

• Animation covers a range of creative techniques and media, from three-dimensional figures captured on film to wholly computer-generated images. Typical for animation is the rapid and continuous change of the graphical objects making up the animation

• The dynamic of animation can be used to direct the user's attention to a specific point.

– Time and movement can be visualised by animation. – Animation can be used to show an invisible process. It enables the simulation of processes

which are too dangerous or difficult to perform directly.– Animation of structures is useful for the exploration of complex environments. – Animation can be used for gradual illustration of a content. – Complex contents (e.g. process, function) can be simplified by animation. – Animation can be used to show the reaction on an interaction.

[Baecker, Small, Mander ,2001]


How to do an animated transition?

• Design: – An animation sequence should be short. – The direction of movement influence the meaning of

the information conveyed. – Animation should be supported by sound. – Animation techniques for global changes to the entire

screen are cut, fade in and fade out, dissolve, wipe, overlap, and multiple exposure.

– Animation techniques for local changes within a region of the screen are pop on and pop off, pull down and pull up, flip, and spin.

[Ware,2004]


How to do an animated transition?

• Interaction: – The user should be able to interrupt the animation

sequence at any time– The user should be able to repeat parts of the

animation– The user should be able to control the animation

playing speed (e.g. fast forward)– The user may manipulate an animated object


Related work

• DiffIE

Always onAlways on

In-In-situsitu

New to New to youyou

Non-intrusiveNon-intrusive

Changes to Changes to page since your page since your

last visitlast visit

[Teevan, Dumais, Liebling, Hughes,2010]


Related Work

• Temporal Aspects– Slow In/Slow Out is better in all regards– Adaptive speed performs best when complexity found

at endpoints

time →

→ Speed

Slow InSlow Out

Constant Fast InFast Out Adaptive

Fast

Slow

Fast

Slowt

[Dragicevic, Bezerianos, Javed, Elmqvist, Fekete, 2011]


• Flow

Architecture of the system


GraphicalUI Editor

UI Model

Adaptation Editor

AdaptedUI Model

Transitionscenario


• Resizing operations: are aimed at changing a widget size in order to optimize screen real estate, aesthetics, and visual design

– For instance, an edit field could be enlarged/shortened in height and/or length to take less space and to be subject to various alignments.

• Relocating operations: are aimed at changing a widget location in order to reduce the screen space consumption

– For instance, “Ok”, “Cancel”, and “Help” push buttons could be relocated to the bottom of a dialog box.

• Widget transformations: are aimed at replacing one or a group of widgets by another widget or another group of widgets ensuring the same task, perhaps with some degradation

– For instance, an accumulator that consists of list boxes with possible values and chosen values could be replaced by a multi-selection list, which could be in turn replaced by a multi-selection drop-down list.

• Image transformations: are aimed at changing the size, surface, and quality of an image in order to accommodate the constraints imposed by the new context of use, namely the display/platforms constraints.

• Splitting rules: are aimed at dividing one or a group of widgets into one or several other groups of widgets that will be displayed separately. For instance, a dialog box is split into two tabs in a tabbed dialog box

Adaptation operations


Adaptation operation

Animation family, animated transition with justification

SET that modifies the length of a UI element into a larger value (absolute or relative)

Horizontal scroll/wipe from left (F1): this operation minimizes the visual change since only the right part resulting from the enlarging is changing. For edit fields, for instance, this is particularly appropriate because it gives the feeling that the field is really expanding

SET that modifies the height of a UI element into a larger value (absolute or relative)

Vertical scroll/wipe from bottom (F1): this operation minimizes the visual change since only the right part resulting from the enlarging is changing

DISPLAY that displays a new UI element at a certain position

Uncover (F3), Box out (F4), or Iris open (F4): these operations all induce a progressive display of a new UI element at once, thus creating the illusion that it is coming from the empty.

UNDISPLAY that undisplays a new UI element at a certain position

Cover (F3), Box in (F4), or Iris close (F4): these operations all induce a progressive disappearing of a existing UI element at once, thus creating the illusion that it is shrunk to an empty/white region.

REPLACE that substitutes a UI element by another one

Barn door open (F2): this operation affects the entire visual aspect of the previous one and the new one.

DISTRIBUTE that computes a distribution of a series of UI Elements into a series of UI Containers

Bam door open (F2) or Iris open (F4): these operations enable the visualization of an entire group at once, instead of showing every little display change individually

MOVE that moves a UI element to a new location indicated by its coordinates x and y, possibly in a fixed amount of steps

Ideally, the UI movement could be represented by an animation depicting the movement itself. But practically, this would induce a very long animation, thus increasing again the lag. Therefore, we preferred to adopt a disappearing of the UI element from its original location and an appearing to its target location. Depending on these locations, vertical, horizontal or diagonal replacements (F1) are selected.

How to associate an animated transition to an adaptation operation


Example #1• SUBSTITUTE #listbox_component_19 BY @ComboBox IN #box3 ("newComboBox")

WHERE ROW 0, COL 0;• CONTRACT #newComboBox OF 90 50;• CHANGEBOX #button_1 TO #box3 WHERE ROW 0, COLINSERT 1;• SET #button_1->Content TO "GO!";• CHANGEBOX #button_0 TO #box3 WHERE ROW 0, COLINSERT 2;• SET #button_0->Content TO "[X]";• SET #label_0->FontSize TO 12;• CONTRACT #window_0 OF 40 120;


Example #2• SUBSTITUTE %SelectRadioGroup "groupeType" BY @ComboBox

IN #box110 ("newComboBoxType") WHERE ROW 0, COL 0;• SUBSTITUTE %SelectRadioGroup "groupeEtudiant" BY

@CheckBox IN #box120 ("newCheckBoxEtudiant") WHERE ROW 0, COL 0;

• CONTRACT #window_0 OF 50 50;• CHANGEROWS #box1 TO 25 25 25 25;


Example #3


• Design setup

20 participants

3 transitionscenarios

1. I liked the animation process2. I liked the animation interface3. I preferred the animation over no animation at all4. The animation is easy to use5. The animation is easy to control6. The animation is easy to understand7. The animation is easy to follow8. The animation is easy to progress (forward animation)9. The animation is easy to revert (backward animation)10. The animation represents the adaptation11. The animation is fast12. I would recommend using the animation

12 questions on a5-point Likert scale

(1 = strongly disagree,five = strongly agree)

User study

• Results and discussion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011121314151617181920

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Q5

Q6

Q7

Q8

Q9

Q10

Q11

Q12

I strongly disagree I disagree I am so so I agree I strongly agree

1. I liked the animation process2. I liked the animation interface3. I preferred the animation over no animation at

all4. The animation is easy to use5. The animation is easy to control6. The animation is easy to understand7. The animation is easy to follow8. The animation is easy to progress (forward

animation)9. The animation is easy to revert (backward

animation)10. The animation represents the adaptation11. The animation is fast12. I would recommend using the animation

User study


• Animated transition is a viable approach provided that– Appropriate animated transitions are adequately

mapped onto adaptation operations– Time and space are properly regulated

• To work on:– Minimize the lag effect that is still there– Group similar, small adaptation operations

Intermediary conclusion


Second example: transitions between UI

views

Motivations Software development life cycle typically involves many

steps at various levels of abstraction In Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), 3 levels of abstraction

Computing-Independent Model (CIM) Platform-Independent Model (PIM) Platform-Specific Model (PSM)

User Interface (UI) development life cycle is similar In UI development according to Cameleon Reference Framework

(CRF), 4 levels of abstraction Task and domain models Abstract User Interface (AUI) model Concrete User Interface (CUI) model Final User Interface

In Model-based UI design, the mapping problem Task, domain, presentation, dialog, help, tutorial


Motivations Transition between steps, levels is hard to grasp

(imagine, understand, maintain, evolve) Models found at each level are different: concepts, relationships,

and attributes are different Models may have different views depending on

The stakeholder (designer, marketing, end user) The step (e.g., early design vs advanced design) The concepts (e.g., level of details)

Transitions between models are complex E.g., mappings, transformations in MDA

Consequences Mode switching is frequent Cognitive load is high Learning curve is slow


Basic concepts

Concep-tual view

External view

Internal view

3 types of representation: Internal: UI code (in programming of markup language) External: UI as experienced by the end user Conceptual: UI representation abstracted from the UI code

SemanticsSyntaxStylistics


Basic concepts

Concep-tual view

External view

Internal view

Possible transitions between representations: From Conceptual to

Internal: e.g., to generate UI code from modelsExternal: e.g., to render a UI from its model

From Internal toExternal: e.g., to compile/interpret a UI from its code/markupConceptual: e.g., UI reverse engineering


Basic concepts

Concep-tual view

External view

Internal view

Possible transitions between representations: From External to

Internal: e.g., to draw a UI and to generate code from drawingConceptual: e.g., to infer a UI model from look and feel


Basic concepts

Concep-tual view

External view

Internal view

Loops on representations: From Conceptual to Conceptual: e.g., M2M in MDE From Internal to Internal: e.g., UI transcoding From External to External: e.g., image processing techniques


Typical configuration in Integrated Development Environments

Background on UI views

Internal view: user interface

code and properties

Conceptual view:

hierarchical description

External view: final user interface


FormsVBT [Avrahami89] synchronizes 2 UI views



(with structure)

External view: final user interface(without

structure)

Internal view: LaTex-like description


Vista [Brown98] synchronizes 2 UI views in 4 windows


Conceptual view: task

model (UAN hierarchy)

Conceptual view: task model

(UAN tables)

Internal view:Clock code

Internal view: Clock

architecture


TADEUS++ [Stary00] provides 3 views


Conceptual view: domain model (UML

Class Diagram)

Internal view: final user interface

(with structure)


(with structure)


TADEUS++ [Stary00] provides 3 views


Conceptual view: domain model (Object

oriented model)

Conceptual view: final user interface

(with structure)

Conceptual view: user

model


model


Teallach [Griffith00] has 2 views: domain and task, UI



model

Conceptual view: final user interface

(with structure)


IdealXML [Montero06] has conceptual views



Conceptual view: abstract user interface

(with structure)


Class Diagram)

IdealXML [Montero06] links views by a table



Class Diagram)


Conceptual view: abstract user interface

(with structure)


GEF3D [von Pilgrim 08] synchronizes 3 views



Class Diagram)


(with structure)

External view: final user interface(without

structure)


Almost no links represented between views When links are represented

Legibility problems Scalability problems

Variation of link representations Line, arrows, table, graph, tree

No immediate feedback High cognitive load

Shortcomings of UI views organisation


Replace links between UI views by an animated transition

Goal


1) Define the initial view

2) Define the final view

3) Define mappings between views

4) Derive the transition based on mappings previously defined

Methodology



Transition type

Internal view External view

Text-to-text <label_short=”Birthdate”>

Text-to-position

<textfield … col=”4”…>

Test-to-length

<textfield … length=”20”.>

Text-to-color-saturation

<textfield. fgColor=”red”.>

Text-to-color-texture

<textfield … bgTexture=”checkerboard”…>

Text-to-shape

<textfield name=”Birthdate”>

Text-to-symbol

<textfield …required=”yes”… >

Birthdate :

Birthdate :4

Birthdate :

20

Birthdate :

Birthdate :

Birthdate :

Birthdate * :

5) Identify animation technique to produce the transition

Text-to-text Text-to-color Text-to-shape Disappearing elements

6) Execute the animated transition

Methodology


Animated Transition from CV to EV


Animated Transition from IV to EV


Anim. Trans. from IV to EV (identified)


Anim. Trans. from IV to EV (Slow down)


UsiView Supports animated transitions between three UI

views: internal, external, conceptual Is implemented in Microsoft Expression Blend

An animated transition is actually a visual effect between two vectorial graphical objects in MS Blend governed by parameters

Location Speed Acceleration - Deceleration

Reduces the cognitive load of mode switching

Results


Final conclusion


Animated transitions are a viable approach for depicting the behaviour of some phenomenon

For a change of context Between an initial and a final state

Provided that Temporal aspects are well designed Spatial aspects are adequately programmed Effects are derived from the model views, not randomly

In memoriam: Paul Vanderdonckt(8 May 1933 – 31 March 2012)


For more information and downloading,http://www.lilab.be

User Interface eXtensible Markup Languagehttp://www.usixml.org

Thank you very much!

FP7 Serenoa projecthttp://www.serenoa-fp7.eu


http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/bchi

http://www.usixml.org/

animated transitions for empowering interactive information systems - keynote address of...

Technology

general animated transition

animated transition

information screen

dislocating transition

transient screen

general information

motivations animation

detailed information