My latest series of videos for Adobe Fireworks CS4 is now available over at Adobe TV.  Check them out!

Export CSS and Images Part 1: Creating the page structure and placing key content elements.

Export CSS and Images Part 2: Using HTML component symbols and slices

Export CSS and Images Part 3: Inserting placeholders for dynamic content

I’ll also be presenting a session on using Fireworks for wireframing and prototyping and conducting two “Bring Your Own Laptop” labs on exporting CSS and Images from Fireworks CS4 at Adobe MAX 2009 in Los Angeles. If you’re attending, look me up.

As web sites and web applications become increasingly complex, they are also becoming decreasingly static. Web sites no longer present themselves as passive, static blocks of text and images. They move on their own and in response to user actions in order to:

• Capture attention (e.g., animated banner ads)
• Provide feedback after user actions (e.g., mouseover and on-click states)
• Provide deeper levels of information and facilitate understanding (e.g., infographics that illustrate complex data, such as planetary orbits)

Unfortunately, too much of this animation and motion is gratuitous and does not serve to enhance the user experience, and in many cases it actually distracts the site visitor. Usability professionals often encounter test participants who use their hands (or even sticky notes) to cover parts of the monitor where animated banner ads appear, because the ads attract their attention and distract from the content they are trying to read.

The animated GIF for banner ads that annoyed us for years before declining are being replaced by slicker Flash ads with embedded audio and video, elaborate animation, and even interactivity. Additionally, web sites and applications are using more motion and multimedia to add value to content and attract attention. In some cases the result is a sensory cacophony that overwhelms visitors and reduces the quality of the user experience.

Is animation bad? Should motion and multimedia be avoided? No, but we do need to consider when, where, and why we choose to use it. Animating a logo or image or infographic simply because we can is gratuitous. There should be value and improvement to the user experience, and the animation should support and enhance the content and goals of the site. Here are some basic principles for effective motion graphics and animation:

1. Remember: motion attracts attention. Using too much animation and motion on a single page results in competition for attention and often frustrates visitors. If you choose to use motion to draw attention, give the visitor control and the ability to stop the motion if it distracts them from their goal.
2. Animated graphics are only better than static graphics when they make it easier to understand complex information by being more visually explicit.
3. The content and format of a graphic should closely correspond to the content and format of the concepts and information to be conveyed (also known as the Congruence Principle.) For example, it is more difficult to understand the variations in the stock market looking at tabular numeric data than by looking at diagrams of value over time. Animation adds the ability to include changes in time and space in a more visually explicit way.
4. To be effective, animations need to be correctly understood by the viewer (also known as the Apprehension Principle.) Animations are often too complex or move too fast to be accurately processed and understood by visitors. Make the animation interactive, and give visitors the ability to pause, rewind, restart, and even control the speed or flow of the animation so that they can better focus their attention and thinking on the important and more complex portions.
5. Avoid clutter and unnecessary complexity. Provide enough information and visual cues to help the visitor understand, but do not include extraneous information or design elements that may confuse or distract.
6. Be organized and focused before starting to create the animation or motion graphics. Write a script, create storyboards, and have a plan to convey the information in a concise and focused way, otherwise you may wander away from the goal and include unnecessary information and/or steps.
7. Use the animation to tell a story. A coherent narrative helps visitors better understand the information in a meaningful context.
8. Support animations and motion graphics with corresponding text. Do not assume that the animations are sufficiently explicit to understand without supporting information. If you are using audio to support the animation, give the visitor the ability to control playback and volume.
9. Consider using visual metaphors to help visitors better understand complex information and concepts and to reduce ambiguity.
10. Avoid design myopia. You already understand the information and concepts, therefore your animation and motion graphics design will make sense to you. Show the animation to other people, test it with your target audience, and evaluate whether or not they understand it correctly. What seems obvious to you may be less so to others.

A common mistake when creating personas is equating one persona with one style of online behavior. Although this simplifies the creation and presentation of personas, it is not an accurate reflection of actual site visitors, their motivations, and their behaviors. Do you have the same goals and behave the same way all the time?

People behave differently under different circumstances and have different needs and goals at different times. Although it may be convenient to think of John Q. Persona as “the guy who abandons his shopping cart ten times before committing to the purchase,” this is not necessarily the way he behaves all the time.

Nearly all web site visitors will change their online behavior based on their current goals. Sometimes we have extra time to surf, and sometimes we are in rush and need to get in and get out efficiently. Sometimes we need to search extensively (e.g., I want a good suspense novel), and sometimes we already know what we are looking for and where (e.g., I want the latest Anne Rice book.) But rarely do we do the same thing every time.

Personas should be representative of actual site visitors, and that means that they will have a range of goals and behaviors. Some behaviors may be more common than others, but they will exhibit a variety of behaviors over time. Yes, John Q. Persona may be more likely to abandon shopping carts than other personas, but perhaps he only does that when comparison shopping for himself. His behavior may be different when he shops for gifts for others, or maybe his behavior changes when he browses from home versus browsing from his office during lunch.

To get the most out of personas, we should separate the personalities (i.e., the personas) from the actual behaviors. Create personas to learn about who site visitors are demographically, what motivates them, how they react to options or designs, and what content or experiences are important to them. Create experience flows to describe the most common behaviors that are observed or desired for the site (e.g., gift shopping vs. product research.) Then play mix-and-match with the personas and the experience flows: which experience flows are most likely for each persona, then rank order them. For example, John Q. Persona may exhibit more cart abandonment behavior than any other persona, but he may also be interested in comparison shopping, product research, and interactive merchandising displays.

Personas are meant to be realistic representations of actual site visitors, so it is important to remember that real visitors behave differently at different times and under different circumstances, therefore personas should also exhibit tendencies, preferences, and ranges of behavior.

A recent blog post on MSDN discussing the usability process behind the new Microsoft Office 12 “ribbon” used to present function icons in the interface described how they learned from observation that users could scan the icons more quickly when the icons are not all the same size. But not everyone thinks (based on their intuition) that different sized icons are a good idea.

I (Jensen Harris, the blog author) was reading a blog entry of someone who was kind of critical and dismissive about what we’re doing and our designs. One of his criticisms was “how bad the usability of the Ribbon would be because it’s got icons scattered all over of various sizes.” What we’ve learned is actually the opposite. People can scan disparate patterns more easily than homogenous patterns. When we use more toolbar-like layouts–a bunch of equally-spaced, equally-sized buttons, people scan them less quickly than when each chunk has a memorable layout. So we actually try explicitly to vary the layouts between chunks–it helps people find the thing they’re looking for more quickly.

This is a great example of how we are re-discovering some basic perceptual principles that have been studied psychologists for nearly 100 years: humans (and all insects and animals, for that matter) are designed to perceive change. We notice more quickly when things are different or when they change, and we get perceptually “bored” when things are all the same and never (or rarely) change. We know from software design experience that rows and rows or columns and columns of the same icon in file management UIs offer no scanning advantage, but if just one of those icons differs it seems to literally jump off the page at us. We notice the difference.

It is possible for historical reasons that function icons in toolbars are the same size because is it easier to design and build a toolbar where everything fits together like uniform bricks. It’s more difficult to create a toolbar where all of the pieces are different sizes and must be properly arranged in order to “look right.” Perhaps we have a perceived need for a grid-based system because it is simpler, not because it is better.

Yes, icons do vary in color and content based on the function, so there are differences among the icons already, but a standard icon size introduces a regularity that makes it more difficult to see those differences. Reading researchers have known for a long time that we read LONGER TEXT PASSAGES WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS MORE SLOWLY THAN WE READ PASSAGES WRITTEN WITH BOTH UPPER AND LOWER CASE LETTERS, because the ascenders and descenders provide us with word patterns based on the differences among the letters that we recognize more quickly. All caps letters are uniform rectangles, but a mixture of upper and lower case letters are a sequence of different sizes and shapes. We notice the differences.

Change and difference can occur in more than size, shape, and color; it can also occur over time. Our attention is drawn by things that move. Yes, we can see things when they are stationary, but when something moves it attracts us, it makes us want to look at it. Predatory animals are particularly sensitive to movement, but when the prey remain motionless it is much harder for the hunter to perceive it. Camouflage only works well when you are sitting still. Many animals are equipped with the coloring and instinct to blend in: fawns lay motionless in the dry grasses and stick insects cling motionless to branches. If they move, they become dinner.

We can use these perceptual principles to our advantage: facilitate scanning by using color, shape, and size cues to create memorable patterns, and draw attention with the use of differences, change, and motion. Although it may be easier to build UIs based on a grid pattern, the reality of our perceptual systems (and of the organic world) is that patterns are based on differences not similarities.