The development of a smartphone animation fluency evaluation scale based on qualitative and quantitative research

The fluency of animation is deemed to significantly influence user experience. However, there is no effective tool to evaluate users’ experience of smartphone animation fluency. The current research aims to develop and verify a smartphone animation fluency evaluation scale through 3 studies. Study 1 collected users’ evaluations of and suggestions about smartphone animation and extracted 4 evaluation dimensions of smartphone animation fluency: rationality, consistency, quality, and promptness. Study 2 and Study 3 developed fluency evaluation scales for clicking and switching animation, respectively, and examined the construct validity of the scales by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Through the analysis of 1424 data points, the results showed that the smartphone animation fluency evaluation scale has great reliability and validity, and the dimension of animation fluency can significantly predict users’ overall attitudes towards smartphone animation. Finally, based on the results of the above three studies, we propose a smartphone animation fluency evaluation model (named the FAIE model) containing four dimensions: function value, aesthetic value, interactive value, and emotional value. The development of a smartphone animation fluency evaluation scale can be used for enterprises to design and evaluate animation fluency to improve users’ satisfaction with products.