I’ve been wanting to make sure I document my thoughts and summary of the book “Learning with Animation” I got from Maria. This way when I need to reference some of it, I can go back to my journal and know what area I am thinking of rather than trying to dig through the book.
The first section about the effects of spacial ability and knowledge was very interesting to me and something I had not quite considered. The section basically describes how animation has different effects on different types of people. The way the authors ‘categorize’ these people are through their spacial abilities and prior knowledge. Spacial ability was described as the ability to visualize concepts and motion specifically in the mind. It was also referred to as internal visualization (versus external, which is content your eyes see). I mentioned this before in a post about how we have to infer motion from static diagrams, which is internal and this relies on our spacial abilities. I will have to go back and document exactly what the relationship is, because it seemed that there were many studies referenced that all had different or even contradicting conclusions regarding this aspect of visual processing.
Knowledge was another aspect. Similar to spacial ability, a viewer’s prior knowledge about the communicated subject had an effect on the animations effectiveness. This also had many research conclusions, and I would prefer to look them over and try to make a small diagram or visualization of the relationship.
The summary was: our mental visualization and knowledge coming into the animation or visual content determines how that content will effect us. Granted, this text was using mechanical processes as the visual content, but I am convinced that it applies to many different types of content when they serve as the subject of the animation. I will begin thinking about this in terms of paintings, which had already ran through my mind while reading.
To me, it sounds like I should target those who have a high spacial ability and a decent amount of prior knowledge coming to the visual content. Based on the conclusions for people with low spacial and low knowledge, it does not sound like I want to create content that would be beneficial for that type of viewer. It is not to say content to benefit these people could not be created, but my research momentum is more aligned with the opposite; viewers who know about painting and can internally visualize motions.
Winegardner Design Journal and Portfolio 