It certainly wasn’t very effective for solving our tasks. Whether they had interactivity or not, users in the animation condition were less accurate than small multiples. Users took a very long time to answer questions when given an interactive animation, scrolling back and forth. When we took that control away, they’d quickly make their best guess. Despite that, interactive animation wasn’t much more accurate then non-interactive!
But we also found that users really liked the animation view: Study participants described it as “fun”, “exciting”, and even “emotionally touching.” At the same time, though, some participants found it confusing: “the dots flew everywhere.”