Balanced cognitive load significantly improves the effectiveness of algorithm animation as a problem-solving tool

The question of whether animations depicting running algorithms are beneficial in helping users has received mixed results. This paper provides evidence that the effectiveness of animations as an aid in performing a task is affected by several factors that have no influence on text-only aids. We make our case by comparing two separate studies designed to measure whether the addition of animations to textual descriptions of a running computation promotes understanding of distributed algorithms. The text-based conditions in both experiments resulted in statistically similar results, while the animation-added conditions resulted in different outcomes. The best visualization condition outperforms all other conditions by a significant margin. The factors that were different between the two experiments fall under the concept of cognitive economy. Therefore, the degree of cognitive economy is important both for empirical studies that involve animation and for practical applications in which people rely on dynamic visualization to solve an algorithmic problem.