The Impact of Animation Timing and Location on Visual Search Task Performance in the Web Environment

Research results from a previous study show that animation as non-primary information significantly reduces information-seeking performance in a web-based environment (Zhang 2000). This study continues to explore the impact of animation timing and location on visual search tasks. The results indicate that (1) animation that appears during the middle or toward the end of an information-seeking task degrades performance more significantly than animation that appears at the very beginning. (2) Animation that appears and disappears repeatedly affects performance much more than animation that appears on the screen all the time. And (3) animation on the left side of the screen affects performance more than animation on the right side. This study helps understand the impact of animation use in the web environment, thus has practical implications for website designers as well as online advertisers in the design of effective webpages using animation.