I'm sure I'm not the only one whose inner ear acts up when dealing with certain visuals. I can't look out the side window from a moving vehicle. I can't watch (or play) most video games because the screen movement makes me nauseated.
Unfortunately, I felt the same effect while doing a review of Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 Vol. 2 for Visual Studio Magazine. The innovative carousel control - especially popular in WPF and Silverlight - brings on motion (simulation) sickness.
This is a shame, because a carousel is an excellent way to give users a perspective view of data, making it easy to rotate important items to the fore for editing or analysis.
My questions are:
- Should designers of next generation "glam apps" be concerned about the possibility their carousels could make a tiny percentage of users ill?
- Should there be an alternate interface for those of us who are forced to look away from our screens when data starts to swirl?