Which animation effects improve indirect manipulation?

This paper describes an experiment 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 were 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: modi®ed telltale, wiggle, colour, or no visual cue. We found the modi®ed telltale, wiggle, and colour visual effects signi®cantly more effective than no visual feedback for cuing the user as to original position of the graphical objects. The modi®ed telltale and colour effects were signi®cantly more effective than the wiggle effect. The major conclusion drawn from this experiment is the use of visual feedback improves a user's ability to remember the previous position of graphical objects after an alignment operation. q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.