Animations Effect on Reading Comprehension in Web-based User Interfaces

Sammanfattning: When it comes to web-based user interfaces and web design, one of today’s trends is to use informative and storytelling animations. They can be used as tools for communication, simplifying the interaction, or guiding the user’s attention. However, those animations used in a web- based user interface can slow down the interaction and the user flow and become a distraction for the user. Three popular informative and storytelling animations that are used in web design are: background video, animated slideshows, and parallax scrolling. In order to understand what effect these informative animations have on the users’ reading comprehension on websites — four prototypes were created in Adobe Muse. A user study in form of an A/ B testing followed by a questionnaire were conducted, showing that the three different animations affected the reading comprehension negative. While they at the same time also brought an entertaining feeling to the user experience (UX).