Evaluating the Effects of Animations on Mobile Application Learnability

Screen transition and animation has long been used to represent information, cues and to enhance visual appeals on screen presentation. However, the use of screen transition and animation on mobile application has been restricted in the past due to mobile device constraints. Recent development of more powerful devices has sparked interest in implementing animation technique to improve usability on mobile device. This paper describes a usability study performed to evaluate the effects of animations on mobile application learnability. The study was conducted using two prototypes of mobile travel guide application to 12 users of different gender between the ages of 17 to 39 years old. One of the prototypes incorporated some animations on its interface while another prototype served as control. The two prototypes were implemented using Java Micro Edition (JavaME) platform on Nokia Symbian E-Series phone. Users were asked to perform a set of tasks without the aid of on-screen help or application documentation in order to observe the application learnability. The outcome of this study showed that 83% of the users agreed the animations helped them to use the application intuitively and improved the visual appeal of the application in general.