Interruptible motion
Sources
- EmpiricalBaudisch et al. (2006)
Animated transitions force users to wait; immediately showing the outcome allows interaction to continue without a delay.
“Animated transitions can help, but they force users to wait for the animation to complete.”Abstrak
- TheoryHutchins et al. (1985)
Direct manipulation requires objects to behave like themselves; a moving physical object can be reversed at any time.
“direct manipulation requires that the system provide representations of objects that behave as if they are the objects themselves”Abstrak
- TheoryChang & Ungar (1993)
Objects that enter and leave smoothly are easier to follow than objects that appear or disappear abruptly; positional jumps are abrupt changes.
“Self objects arrive and depart smoothly, without sudden materializations and disappearances”Abstrak
Priority
Frame-by-frame position samples can clearly falsify the claim; sources describe both waiting costs and abrupt-change risks.
Experiments
- 001Interruptible motionCompleted
Findings
CSS transitions reversed from their current position without a single frame moving the wrong way at either reversal point or viewport width. The two failing approaches behaved differently: @keyframes jumped to the new animation endpoint (40 points when reversed halfway, only 2–4 near the end of ease-out), while input locking always failed because the latest user command was discarded and the panel ended in the wrong state.