Banner Blindness is a term which refers to the theory that users ignore page elements that have typical traits of an advertisement. Animation is one trait of advertisements which users have allegedly learned to ignore. However, a 2003 study by Ping Zhang and Nelson Massad for the Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems shows that:
- Animation is a mental distraction even if viewed peripherally.
- Contrary to banner blindness, animation distracts experienced users as well as beginners.
The study’s concluding comments expand on these findings further.
Despite some studies showing that experienced Web users are less likely to be distracted by competing stimuli on the Web than novice users (Bruner II and Kumar, 2000; Dahlen, 2001; Diaper and Waelend, 2000), our study indicates that animation’s interference effects have not changed much over the years and are still affecting experienced users such as the participants in our study. For the large part, subjects were not able to block the animations even though they knew animations have little to do with their tasks and some of them thought they were able to ignore the animations. This means that, to some extent, animation is processed involuntarily, a finding supported by major visual attention studies.
So, should we use animation in our site designs or not?
More likely than not, it would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis with appropriate analysis of the target audience and goals of the site. However, one type of animation I think is always permissible & often helpful to include is transitional interface feedback resulting directly from a user input or action. In other words, if a user clicks or mouses over something, feedback in the form of movement could make the interface more usable and provide clarification of what system actions the user has triggered. For instance, when you minimize a window in your operating system, there’s usually an animation showing the window shrinking down onto the task bar. This isn’t just for fun – it actually provides novice users with feedback that lets them know they haven’t lost their work, and where they can go to get it back.
Animation may look like an advertisement, or sometimes it may be annoying. Studies may not give us a definitive answer one way or another. In the end, good interaction design principles as well as thorough audience analysis and usability testing will help us decide on the best solution.
What do you think of this apparent contradiction between the widely accepted belief in banner blindness and the results of this study? How do you feel about the use of animation as feedback in an interface? Have you found any examples where animation enhances the usability of an interface?
4 Comments
What I have read, and noticed, about ads is that it is entirely a second site kinda thing. I mean, I never buy something straight through a click-through, but I went to GoDaddy because thats what I always hear about. I think its the same deal as billboards, you dont go to McDs because you saw a billboard, you think of that billboard when you get hungry
That’s a good point, and I think a lot of bookmarking services exist in browsers or as online applications, which allow people to save interesting things for later – including information they may have gotten through an advertisement.
for me, animation is always an eyecatcher. some animation is extremely annoying, some is highly appreciated. it is more likely that advertising animation belongs to the annoying type, but this isn’t always the case. yet, if the animated ad distracts me from reading the topic at hand i dislike it.
with static banners however i can be ignorant upto 100%, and with ease. i find that often out when my mother talks about things (on a site i sent her the url of) i had never seen before: some advertising banners. – come to speak of it: this also happens with moderately animated banners.
for me there is no contradiction in your article, as long as you keep animation in the equation: animation in a banner catches your eye, static banners may vanish in the unconscious.
True, maybe there is a correlation between the amount of movement in a banner ad and the amount of distraction it causes. It sounds like an intuitive hypothesis.