Talking about the usefullness of a transitionary UI design even after many times of usage - I had started to write a post with an example in the original thread and Qgil asked to take the conversation elsewhere so I deleted it .... but to repeat...

In the current Diablo there is the wifi connector and volume control, screen brightness controls all lined up in that small bar at the top.

When I am driving I try to reach for the volume or wifi contols with my finger I always invariable click on adjacent icons which is very very irritating , particularly when driving (heck I am sure people do that even when stationary). The Icons are so small.

Instead if when touching the top bar a bigger slider bar slid out with larger easily accessible icons that would make it so much more friendly and easier to get to the correct button and correct function. At the same time it would hide back when not in use (slide back - to give the animatated analogy) and thus not use up the screen space when not in use.

How does the animation help in this case ? A static panel could have opened up also. But when driving, a animated screen drawing helps in getting your attention out of the corner of the eye also while a static panel would not be so visible unless you look at it directly. The visual cue is the important part.

These are small things (I am sure many can also drive and use it without the animation). Its just that such a animated slider would make it easier and effective in these circumstances (lets not get into the argument of whether I should use the NIT while driving, that's been beat to death).

Another example on the iPhone - when pressing the onscreen keys the animated larger letter popping up and back in gives a visual cue as to which letter you typed. Ask any iPhone user if that function alone has not helped in typing faster and catching a wrong type more easily ?

Will repeated use of these functions reduce the usability and thus make it a eye-candy only ? No I beleive not.

i do not think that the interface was ever intended to be operated by someone driving a car at the same time.

btw, i have no issue hitting those icons using my finger. the trick is the edge if the finger, with the nail, not the fingerprint...

I think there's an agreement on how animations can be helpful at least in the beginning to learn what's going on, how an application framework behaves.

What I found is that animations are not the only visual help we have... and maybe not even the best:

Animations may be visible only for a short period of time. An animation may indicate that the current screen is part of a certain application or was triggered by a button you pressed - but if for whatever reason you missed this animation, you need something else.

For example I found it unbelievably difficult to follow screencasts of Maemo 5 applications. It all was a mess of widgets thrown on top of each other, I never knew where we were within the application. Had we left a screen and gone back? Had we proceeded to the next screen? Where do these buttons come from?

I slowly realised that this was because I'm trained to understand the meaning of windows that are positioned on top of each other. I'm trained to understand modal dialogs. I see a window in the background and a second one on top and I know: The one on top is probably a sub-window of the one behind it. I need to close it ("cancel") to return there. I'll know that even if I wasn't the one who opened these windows in the first place. This is visual information from a static UI.

I find some of that missing in Maemo 5 because so much is happening full screen (that's "stackable Windows", isn't it?). Plus, at least in the screencasts, the animations aren't very clear and I don't, of course, see/hear when or where the user clicked on an element. This makes it very frustrating to follow these screencasts. I need to watch them 3-4 times before I understand whats going on at all.

So while animations can provide additional information, static graphical information might be even more important and is more persistent, which makes it easier to "read". - When in doubt (or if I'd have to choose), I'd go for static UI, therefore.

Do you consider the blinking light on the n8x0's static information or an animation?