Animated Transitions for Empowering Interactive Information Systems

Animated transitions are widely used in many differ- ent domains of human activity, ranging from cartoons and mov- ies to computer science for powerfully conveying a message more effectively and efficiently about a phenomenon of interest. This paper reviews a series of techniques for defining, analyzing, and exploiting animated transitions in different types of interactive information systems. A general conceptual model is provided that explicitly links a model of an interactive information system, its model elements and relationships to animated transitions in or- der to adequately reflect any change of the model into animated transitions. Two instantiations of this conceptual framework are discussed: animated transitions for representing adaptation of the graphical user interface of an interactive system, along with its implementation; and animated transitions between user inter- face views during development life cycle.