The effective use of animation in simulation model validation

The paper documents a continuing effort to determine how animation is most effectively used for both model validation and model communication. This research examined how to effectively use animation to display invalid model behavior. The invalid behavior displayed by each animation was a violation of an explicit model assumption. Two animation displays (moving icons and bar graphs) were evaluated individually and in combination at two different presentation speeds. The communication ability of each animated presentation was measured both subjectively and objectively. The paper presents the objective performance of each animated presentation measured across eight different violations of model assumptions. Objective measurements included the subject´s identification accuracy for each violation and their response times. The results showed that the moving icon animation was superior to the other two displays and that subjects identified violations sooner when the animation was shown at the slower of the two presentation speeds.