Animation and Continuity: Prerequisites for intuitive Navigation in
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1. should we knowingly refrain from designing e motion into the digital worlds that reside in our products Why isn t there the same urge in designers to make a user s interaction with a digital product universe emotional and pleasurable Emotion and pleasure are the driving forces in human behavior purchasing decisions are based on emotional grounds The rational aspects of human behavior loses out if in conflict with our emotional hard wiring And this will be the case for at least another few millions of years Once we define the conceptual model of the functional universe inside a product and only when the appropriate hardware interface has been defined can we begin to design the exterior of the product The digital world inside may not present itself through just one display Maybe there are distributed displays maybe no display at all maybe the product communicates via product body language and product gestures Maybe there are no buttons because a built in camera or other sensory equipment reads a user s desires The existence of displays and buttons has such an impact on a product s exterior that it is simply impossible to design without first having taken care of these basic decisions While in the old days technical constraints often forced the designer to bow to a long list of engineering requirements engineering now is able to cater to almost any whim of the designers Our constraints now derive from what a human brain is able2. access We will need to reflect how the user is guided to the other locations in our universe If we want a user s access to the virtual universe to be intuitive we have to assign a singular location to each of its functions and we have to make the transition from one location to another observable Past arguments against animation in interface design pointed out that graphic processors with sufficient power to support animation were too expensive Nowadays the opposite is true The loss of emotional value and user happiness is way too expensive for any company to afford Saving a dollar here or there is saving in the wrong place While there is a lot of well justified criticism to be mentioned with respect to the iPod even the first generation iPod at least came with a healthy dose of animation in its user interface However it is just as detrimental to the cause to use cheap graphic processor power for meaningless flashy animation as a mere decorative element Such abuse of processor power only diverts the user s attention from the meaningful aspects of an interface it angers and frustrates and contributes to the notion of cheap Never must an animation happen so fast that it could not be watched And it never must happen so slowly that a user gets bored or impatient There is a happy medium somewhere in the range of 0 2 0 4 seconds and with rising user experience this could be brought down close to the 0 1 second bottom limit
3. and willing to process Designers can no longer subject their creativity to the now meaningless engineering requirements of the past However while claiming a more relevant role in the product development team designers are burdened with the responsibility to base their decisions on solid data and scientific fact No design education should ignore the relevance of cognitive and evolutionary psychology cultural anthropology and even neuroscience only to name a few of the partner disciplines without which to execute our profession would be frivolous We should also say goodbye to the old concepts of controlling a product While of course products are tools or servants and thus derive their existence from their servant role they have become smarter and more powerful and the way we communicate is about to change Products of today s high levels of complexity will exhibit a more complex behavior than the tools of the past They will adjust to different users and situations and their behavior will not always be as predictable and transparent as say that of a vending machine The next generation of complex digital products will have personalities that are communicated to the user by their appearance and behavior Designers will increasingly find themselves in the business of designing a product s personality and body language Choosing the right manufacturing process was easy then designing a consistent product personality requires a deep u
4. children or adults play they follow a genetically programmed urge to explore the properties of the physical world and the objects it comes with A toddler playing with building bricks experiences a law of nature that will enable him later to avoid potentially painful experiences with objects that get into or come flying his way He will forever have acquired the insight that two solid objects cannot occupy the same space in the physical world If one nevertheless tries it will hurt If we successfully manage to put object A into a matching hollow B we will be rewarded with a dose of an endogenic drug In order to keep us exploring the physical world the level of endogenic drugs produced by the same action will be diminished over time so we will try to find other activities that produce new learning experiences and drugs These biochemical mechanisms drive most of our behavior Neuroscience is just beginning to understand the powerful biochemical reward mechanisms that control our every behavior and that are at the root of every play or game even well into our adulthood If two solid objects cannot occupy the same place in the universe known to humans we can follow that every solid object in the universe as we know it must have its own unique space This rule is so basic to our understanding of the physical world that we do not even think about it on a daily base Yet it controls our behavior to such a degree that whenever we walk throug
5. go away and disappear from nowhere seems to answer to the secret desire in all of us to challenge the universal validity of the principles of continuity and animation In certain situations our ability to observe and interpret transitions gets in the way of a stakeholder s intentions Consequently a kidnapper s victim is blindfolded shoved in the trunk of a vehicle and driven around the block a number of times The relevance of our sense of location becomes manifest when the victim still deduces his hiding place from the duration of the trip the surface conditions of the road certain movements as well as sounds and smells As children we boost our ability to cope with such situations in playful ways playing hide and seek invites us to listen to our senses other than visual and what a kick biochemical reward we get when we succeed In the physical world humans and objects move in accordance with the laws of nature Any object is characterized by its inertia and forces are always finite so all motion will follow a non linear trajectory By watching a physical object accelerate and decelerate we gain valuable information about its bulk as well as the forces propelling it This data enters our calculation of its likely future position and thus represents valuable input that humans rely on in their daily lives Furthermore the direction of motion is relevant Handing an object to another person never follows a straight line A h
6. minimalist grid patterns that maybe were in order in the era of print media but no longer serve their purpose in a complex digital design These and other real world concepts will be the subject of future investigation 7 Three examples The following examples may serve to illustrate the concepts of continuity and animation as outlined in this paper Unfortunately the technical limitations of my website bandwidth and storage do not allow me to present them here along with their animations and or interactive simulations all sy erns Go Picture1 Conceptual model left and display right of a truck driver s assistance system Design Ashley Moran 1998 Four functional sectors glide into position from their standby locations in the four corners of the display Every functional sector has its unique location animation is swift but perceivable Start AA za EEE 40 600 d Dax Piogamm Wichs Tempera Schkuden i o Tir gt Picture 2 Conceptual model left of a washing machine interface and its implementation Design Hartmut Ginnow Merkert A linear list is scrolled up or down via a virtual rack and pinion mechanism The location of the rotary knob supports the conceptual model Picture 3 Conceptual model left of a radio dial and its implementation via a flexible OLED Design Hartmut Ginnow Merkert
7. of visual perception Smart interpretation and user detection methods are available today and there is no valid excuse to make users stare at a Windows style screen in any product touched by a designer From the conceptual model we derive the means of transportation hardware interface to navigate our virtual universe While we have to respect standards such as the mouse or keyboard in computers there are many opportunities to reflect upon the usefulness of the typical button and display interface design approach Nowadays inexpensive sensors exist or are becoming available that can read gestures or eye movement that are able to read a user s facial expression or understand voice commands Artificial noses sniff the scent molecules emitted by a user thus becoming able to detect stress anger the user s identity or a medical problem Sound tracking enables systems to read assault situations in public transportation face tracking is used to interpret a shopper s emotional state It is the industrial designer s responsibility to know and explore any technology that might enhance a user s interaction with complex artifacts When we follow the discussion of the hottest new mobile flip phone or watch the happy face of the owner of a Zippo lighter or when we observe hopefully only on TV the expert unfolding of a butterfly knife we realize that the tactile acoustic and dynamic product qualities have a lot to do with emotion Why then
8. Animation and Continuity Prerequisites for intuitive Navigation in Virtual Systems Prof Hartmut Ginnow Merkert Berlin Abstract A user s ability to approach a complex technical system intuitively depends on the proper design of the software and hardware structures representing its functional repertoire If we learn to design and present the functionality of a technical product or system analog to some of the qualities of the Real World we enable users to rely on their genetically predetermined or acquired behavioral inventory Thus interfaces need not to be learned they appear natural at the first glance Essential design parameters are the principles of continuity and animation This paper represents and illustrates the author s argument indicated in the title 1 The current problem with user interfaces You visit a website and click on a link A new page appears You navigate in the menu structure of a mobile phone to locate a particular function Now I want to return to the starting point But where am I How do I get back What do I need to do Heeelp A few steps in the complex functional universe of a contemporary digital product or system leave the user disoriented and lost Unsurprisingly only a few primary functions of the product are ever to be used while an overwhelming proportion of such the digital universe remains obscure never to be visited again Worse while we can lock the door to a scary basement the
9. a violation of continuity and animation Objects such as screen content that disappear in the fraction of a second neither posses a location nor can we derive their likely position in the absence of observable directional motion clues Even in case of the most optimistic assumption that the old object might be covered by the new we receive no hints that would confirm this assumption Neither could we observe its transition nor could we see even a touch of it peeking from underneath And where are all the other objects Maybe someone had envisioned a continuous underlying structure that even existed as a graphical map of the product s functional universe However in its implementation no leads remain as to where in this structure everything is And it gets worse While we can roughly superimpose the map of a city on its aerial picture the map of the functional universe inside a digital product has no visual relationship with its secondary representation the user manual Indeed user manuals represent the information about any product in such a worthless and unsightly manner that users habitually tend to ignore their existence Future instruction manuals hopefully will evolve to become meaningful tools in our exploration of a foreign universe similar to the city maps and tourist guides that we are familiar with Imagine a tourist guide presented in the form and layout of a user manual Kidnapping or hide and seek cannot repr
10. act that some locations are too far to reach or that transportation means have yet to be invented does not violate the principle Continuity is never disrupted Time warps and parallel universes exist only in fantasy or physics labs Sudden occurrences happen in horror movies All places are connected 3 2 The transition of objects from one location to another can be observed Whenever I travel from one location to another I can watch as the objects around me change their locations relative to mine My own movements as well as that of any objects around me occur with a motion characteristic that is within my own cognitive range of visual perception An object that moves too fast or too slow cannot be observed so information about its transition is not available Our observation of an object s speed and direction enables us to predict its most likely future position This ability of the human brain evolved out of a mere need for survival its perfection made the difference between eating and being eaten Humans acquire this ability early on While some adults talk about child s play as an idle pastime playing for children is serious business Even those grown ups that keep their curiosity about the world engaging in game playing do not do this for fun Children and grown ups play because their biochemical system rewards them with an arsenal of drugs made inside their bodies the drugs being a hard wired program that makes us learn to beco
11. ards services of all kinds areas for rest or playgrounds all together constitute the functional universe of a city which again is only a part of a greater functional universe In any functional universe users exist in a variety of user modes Even the same person exists in different modes at different times The user may be ina focused hurry to catch the bus and minutes later he or she switches to the relaxed browsing mode strolling through a shopping mall or exhibit We may have just arrived in this city or we ve lived there for years There are dramatic differences in user disposition and modes of use Real environments exist as a result of a long Darwinist process of mutual optimization and adaptation and they usually accommodate people in varied modes of use There are maps there are pedestrian sidewalks there are trams and there are taxi drivers Intelligent Transportation Assistants There are people one can ask for directions A multitude of familiar clues exist that help users in their decision making A tourist in a foreign city who is looking for a replacement battery for his digital camera will intuitively look for details in peoples clothing behavior and appearance that identify them as locals if only to reduce the disgrace of hitting upon another tourist Today s Homo Digitalis is not that different from his ape like ancestor as we may wish to believe Look at the behavior of car drivers in dense traff
12. esent meaningful paradigms for the design of user interfaces Nevertheless kidnapping interfaces are still the rule today 5 Demands of future Interface Designers A Method Before we should even think of designing the interface of a digital product or website designers must first develop a meaningful conceptual model of the functional universe inside Before we do so we have to investigate what kind of users will be the recipients of our work Are they lay people or experts What if any mechanical background or other experience can they draw from Should the use mode resemble a leisurely stroll across a shopping lane or are we in a hurry to reach a certain destination as quickly and efficiently as possible Do users graduate from layperson to expert over time Do various use modes occur in the same system If so our current one size fits all approach to interface design is obsolete In this case we have to design for different use modes and expert levels Interfaces have to adjust automatically and they have to recognize a user s particular context of use They have to adjust to different learning types and aesthetic preferences While anybody can choose her new car from a variety of convenience packages colors and trims the interfaces inside come in one usually dull version only One has to carefully reflect on the gate through which a user steps into our virtual world the first time Subsequent visits may offer faster
13. h a door we look for clues that enable us to open the door in the proper direction In the absence of such clues e g when clever designers or architects made the door blade flush with the frame we have to guess and our guess will be wrong in 50 of the situations Push or Pull signs represent a band aid approach to design they are mere crutches causing multiple micro incidents of frustration throughout the day Designers who strive for emotionality in design should readily agree that frustration is one of the least desirable forms of emotion that we the designers could generate Another seemingly trivial property of the real world is rooted in our observation of the movement of objects If a child moves an object from one location to another this transition occurs within our cognitive abilities As every object in the real world occupies its own unique location in this universe movement allows us to keep track of the location of any object and we will always associate an object with its location We also observe that all the locations of objects in the physical world are connected You can travel from one place to another everywhere in the known universe You may employ different navigation and transportation strategies In the long run if you have traveled about a portion of the universe all the objects and places you have seen are memorized in a mental map whose detail increases with use and which enables you to find your way arou
14. ic or watch TV with its war scenes crimes and rampages following natural catastrophes or soccer games and you will see how easily the lacerable skin of reason civilization and laws easily tears under the powerful forces of the neurochemical processes that control us at every moment of our lives Whether we live in the Savannas of Africa or in a modern urban jungle the principles of orientation and navigation remain the same Our behavior follows identical patterns of cognition and decision making that we brought with us as our genetic dowry Obviously our behavior in the Real World is intuitive Nobody needs to tell our environment in which mode we prefer to use It is simply there and we can use it any which way we choose In addition to the many ways we can use travel and orient in our natural environment the real world has certain characteristics that every person in the universe irrespective of their cultural educational or genetic backgrounds recognize and perceive as proper Some of these properties shall be investigated in the subsequent chapters 3 Trivial properties of a real world environment The universe in which we live is a three dimensional one Scientists even talk about n dimensional universes and we may choose treat time as a fourth dimension with limited access However all of our navigation and orientation takes place on the surface of our planet in a two dimensional space Our movement in the
15. mber of objects and to recall them from our mental map when the next visit is called for So So apparently humans as well as most autonomous living beings are capable of composing a mental map of their environment as long as they are given a chance to identify the unique location of a target object and watch their progress toward it This way it is not only possible to find a location in a distant town or country Just as easily do we find our fountain pen on a busy desk top and a car driver even manages to compose a mental map of the traffic situation around her from a number of separate visual and auditory inputs It is a marvelous feat of the human brain that we are able to trace a path across a busy sidewalk without bumping into other people and objects Our brain accomplishes this difficult task in background mode while we simultaneously read store signs listen to music from a MP3 player and maintain a conversation with a companion These observations allow us to arrive at two principles that seem to characterize our intuitive interaction with the physical universe 3 1 The locations of all objects exist in a continuous universe The Principle of Continuity Any location e g a restaurant in our physical environment can be reached from any other location e g our home Locations can be in distant towns or countries or on the moon Transportation means may vary One may combine different means of transportation The f
16. me better adapted to the conditions of the physical world surrounding us So a little toddler banging one object into another is seriously engaged in the act of learning that no two objects can occupy the same space in the physical world Designers who are aware of this common insight will never design a door blade to be flush with the wall unless of course they are designing a swinging door that opens both in and out When you think about this every ball game has a purpose hide and seek car races boxing skiing hunting every such activity that humans seem to be doing for fun serve the purpose to develop our ability to predict the future location of an object What is fun Fun is a biochemical product that we were equipped with in order to make us do certain things without which evolution simply wouldn t happen Not only do we find emotional satisfaction in the successful launch of a soccer ball in the direction of the enemy s goal We even pay for being given a chance to watch others play And the excitement couldn t be more genuine just watch the crowds attending any soccer or baseball game Motion outside the cognitive range of humans is also of interest There are many games in which we challenge our ability to watch the transition of an object from one place to another Interestingly humans have had a curiosity about events that happen outside our cognitive range Our fascination with a magician s ability to make things
17. nd in a city on top of a desk or in a room Take the location property of objects away and place a number of them in the same location and you will have difficulties finding a particular object A lady s handbag is a point in case These observations appear trivial because they are so basic to our everyday experience that we do not even think about them Acting without conscious thinking is what we call intuitive and intuitive interaction is what we strive for in the design of complex objects e g mobile phones or systems e g websites But it is just the trivial aspects of life that are hidden from our view just as we cannot see the wood for the trees Making the trees visible to the designer is the purpose of the consideration presented here Trivial design thus becomes desirable The transition of an object from one place to another is observable Any object in our known universe has a singular discrete location All locations in the universe are somehow connected It is possible to move from any location in the universe to any other location Oftentimes it will be necessary to employ different navigation strategies or even to combine various strategies So it is not unusual for us to drive our car to the airport go by plane to a distant city and ask a local for directions to an office building where we will take an elevator to the 10 floor After doing so for a number of times we will be able to remember the locations of a nu
18. nderstanding of the human psyche and a high level of analytical thinking Design education will have to change dramatically And design research will finally become a mandatory academic requirement Design will finally leave the lone genius era just like the medical field left behind the quack doctors of the Middle Ages 6 Outlook Beyond continuity and animation other concepts are waiting for their discovery and translation to the virtual environments that are the subject of the thoughts presented here There is the concept of redundancy objects distinguish themselves by a multitude of qualities such as size form colors materials location and many others We find any object easily and often without looking as long as we placed them on our desk ourselves But have somebody benevolent clean up your desk and you won t find anything at all Take one of these redundancy factors away and things will be much harder to find Another real world concept is that of pattern recognition Isn t it amazing that we can distinguish a loved one from a distance in a big crowd Even when not looking our way we take clues about her skin tone clothing body size stride and others Try to write a computer program that accomplished the same feats and you will realize the incredible power of the pattern recognition processor in our brains So why not design interfaces that employ this ability instead of ignoring it by neatly arranging objects along
19. third dimension hopping jumping climbing is usually connected with considerable effort and only the able bodied would engage in such activity for an extended period of time All the others employ tools and aids of which plenty were invented long before and after Leonardo daVinci began to reflect upon flying machines Fact is Even if we move about the floors and parking decks of a apparently three dimensional multi story edifice we navigate along stacked surfaces and the thinking of most architects is limited to that of stacked surfaces as if this were all that humans would ever have in a three dimensional world But humans invented tools that truly elevate us into the third dimension What about airplanes and space ships If you fly airplanes or space ships for a living you will have undergone hundreds if not thousands of hours of special training just so you are able to find your way around the third dimension and back Travel in the third dimension comes with a lot of extra cognitive work and even if you are able to fly a small plane or helicopter you will try very hard to limit your freedom of movement to that about the vertical axis Why am I going through these seemingly trivial observations Simply because we have to acknowledge that the human cognitive apparatus is well equipped for travel and navigation along a two dimensional plain but much less so for travel everywhere else Children s play is not play at all When
20. uman observer will interpret the quality of any motion in order to make the proper decision about one s next action Motion carries a vast number of meanings Motion is aggressive sick weak powerful natural or not never will we leave motion without interpretation Designers will have to control and define any motion event in the objects or systems they create and they will need to do so in careful reflection of the human ability to read the meaning 4 Violation of the principles of continuity and animation in current interfaces As mentioned earlier even the manufacturers of upscale vehicles expect their customers to accept less than perfect interface solutions It is no natural law that products come with buttons displays or menus Buttons displays and menus are unreflecting choices about a product s sensory equipment defined by technicians who spend too much time staring at their PC Standard wisdom about hierarchical interface structures of so many levels with so many submenus being optimal for the user is nonsensical Humans are known to adapt to almost anything even to hunger war and cold climates But there was never a single moment in those x million years of human evolution where we had to punch the belly button of our vis vis before we could talk to him When a click on a button leads to an instant exchange of display content as it is often the case in web design and digital products we are witnessing
21. undesired elements of a digital universe keep haunting us throughout our interaction with such a device or system At every step in our interaction do they get in our way block our view of the target and add to our frustration When talking about Emotional Design frustration is among the least desirable emotions our products are supposed to evoke We tend to overlook some of the functional deficits of a product when the functional gain exceeds the emotional pain Or when we can afford or have to endure a long period of training due to the emotional gain of finally having acquired a valuable skill or insight Or because we simply have no choice As a result we may develop some form of a love hate relationship or truce which again is not exactly the most desirable level of user acceptance The lack of excitement with a product and some bad experiences with getting lost in its information jungle may reduce a user s interaction to just the basic functions All the many extra functions the pride of engineering and marketing get ignored by the user or worse become major obstacles in the path to those few functions deemed relevant by the user But products exist that are praised for their user experience Why do users talk so positively about Nokia 2 The Functional Universe of a real environment In any real environment a landscape a city visitors are confronted with a multitude of functions Stores buses roads billbo
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