Evaluation of animation effects to improve indirect manipulation

The paper describes an experiment we have conducted to explore the effectiveness of animation in improving indirect manipulation operations. Indirect manipulation operations are those initiated by command menus and buttons, to perform a transformation on a graphical object or set of graphical objects. The particular improvement is an operation's ability to show both what would happen if the operation is committed and what would happen if it were cancelled, while an operation is being considered. The experiment required subjects to watch a simple alignment operation for a set of graphical objects. They were then asked to record the original placement of those graphical objects. Each task used one of four visual cues: modified telltale, wiggle, colour or no visual cue. We found the modified telltale, wiggle, and colour visual effects significantly more effective than no visual feedback for cuing the user as to the original position of the graphical objects. The modified telltale and colour effects were significantly more effective than the wiggle effect.