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Research

The reading behind the experiment, and the sources the site's claims rest on. APA 7th edition

Why the paragraph says what it says

Each stage of the site holds the same short passage about visually induced motion sickness. That passage is not decorative. Sensory conflict theory holds that motion sickness arises when the movement reported by the visual system does not match what the vestibular and somatosensory systems report (Reason & Brand, 1975). A screen can produce exactly that mismatch: the eyes register movement the body never feels. LaViola (2000) applied this to screen-based environments, where the same conflict is described as cybersickness.

This is why the project treats motion as a physical design decision rather than a stylistic one, and why the still version at 00 is composed rather than degraded.

Why a dial, and not a switch

The accessibility standards frame motion as something a person must be able to turn off. WCAG Success Criterion 2.3.3, Animation from Interactions, requires that motion animation triggered by interaction can be disabled unless it is essential, and it names parallax scrolling specifically as the kind of effect that provokes vestibular reactions including dizziness, nausea and headache (World Wide Web Consortium, 2023). The standard is Level AAA, which in practice means most sites never attempt it.

A switch asks whether you want motion. A continuous dial asks how much, per movement, which is the question this project is actually trying to answer.

References

Cybersickness and motion

LaViola, J. J., Jr. (2000). A discussion of cybersickness in virtual environments. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 32(1), 47–56. https://doi.org/10.1145/333329.333344

Reason, J. T., & Brand, J. J. (1975). Motion sickness. Academic Press.

Standards

World Wide Web Consortium. (2023). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/

Case studies

Lanier, G. (n.d.). Interview with Guillaume Lanier, creative coder & frontend developer at Resn [Interview]. Lovers Magazine by Spaces. https://spaces.is/loversmagazine/interviews/guillaume-lanier

Locomotive. (n.d.). Locomotive-scroll [Computer software]. GitHub. https://github.com/locomotivemtl/locomotive-scroll

Locomotive. (n.d.). Work. Retrieved July 21, 2026, from https://locomotive.ca/en/work

Paquet, L. (n.d.). Interview with Louis Paquet, creative director at Locomotive [Interview]. Lovers Magazine by Spaces. https://spaces.is/loversmagazine/interviews/louis-paquet

Resn. (n.d.). Work. Retrieved July 21, 2026, from https://resn.co.nz/

Role model

Head, V. (2016). Designing interface animation: Meaningful motion for user experience. Rosenfeld Media.

Head, V. (n.d.). Val Head. Retrieved July 21, 2026, from https://valhead.com/

Tools referenced

GreenSock. (n.d.). GSAP: GreenSock Animation Platform [Computer software]. https://gsap.com/

Note. Several sources are studio portfolio pages and interviews without publication dates. These use (n.d.) with a retrieval date, per APA 7 guidance for content that may change.

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