The Not-so-Staggering Effect of Staggered Animated Transitions on Visual Tracking

Tests whether staggering the start of object animations helps people track moving objects.

Chevalier et al. (2014)Journaldoi:10.1109/TVCG.2014.2346424

Citation

Chevalier, F., Dragicevic, P., & Franconeri, S. (2014). The Not-so-Staggering Effect of Staggered Animated Transitions on Visual Tracking. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 20(12), 2241–2250.

Method

Simulation and multiple-object tracking experiments.

Claims used

Claims that staggering reduces overlap and makes animation less overwhelming had not previously been empirically established.
Adding stagger had negligible or even negative effects on multiple-object tracking performance.

Limitations: Tracking points in scatterplots; results might not transfer to list-entry animations.

Extracted principles

Staggered motion does not improve trackingNot tested
Staggering the movement of many objects does not necessarily make those objects easier to track.

Motion