
Creating Usability with Motion: The UX in Motion Manifesto - tontonius
https://medium.com/@ux_in_motion/creating-usability-with-motion-the-ux-in-motion-manifesto-a87a4584ddc
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gdubs
I saw a talk a while back with Glen Keane – legendary Disney Animator – called
"The Principles of UX Choreography". [1]

It was fascinating. The Disney Principles of animation went beyond 'looks
good', and existed to solve real problems – like helping the audience follow
the action.

1: [https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-principles-of-ux-
choreog...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-principles-of-ux-
choreography-69c91c2cbc2a)

~~~
jacobolus
Disney’s animation book ( _The Illusion of Life_ ) is very nice, but the best
animation source I’ve seen anywhere is _The Animator’s Survival Kit_.
Unfortunately the excellent videos that go with the book are pretty expensive
for someone who is vaguely curious (but not deciding to make animation their
career) to stomach. I recommend trying to find a library with a copy, or
similar.

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seanmcdirmid
There is always this classic UIST 93 paper:

[http://www.cs.uml.edu/~grinstei/91.510/Papers/p45-chang.pdf](http://www.cs.uml.edu/~grinstei/91.510/Papers/p45-chang.pdf)

(Animation: From Cartoons to the User Interface)

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ex3ndr
Before building animations learn how to implement them to work smooth. Hint:
It is not possible anywhere except iOS native apps. Even google doesn't have
all animations from their material guides on Android, web is a nightmare.

Also adding complex animations require pretty high budget. Create fancy
counter takes 1 hour, make it with animation - couple of days of testing and
adjusting timings.

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anotheryou
Oh I want to work somewhere with enough budget for nice animations and custom
icons everywhere...

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KaiserPro
Please please please remember, that for most people animations are not smooth.
They are an annoyance and a barrier to using an interface at any speed.

They can be useful for hiding transitions for things that are slow. However
instead of engineering an animation stack, make the backend faster....

 _cough_ linkedin, salesforce, workday _cough_

~~~
radley
That's simply not true. You're talking about "intrusive animation" which is
the byproduct of poor design and/or implementation.

As an extreme example of UI animation, here's Persona 5:
[https://youtu.be/XniK5Q5amoA?t=2m44s](https://youtu.be/XniK5Q5amoA?t=2m44s)

~~~
Stanleyc23
I think you may have missed their point.

>for most people animations are not smooth

I don't know about most, but it's definitely true that there are processing
limits inherent to user's hardware that make certain animations run very
clunky, thereby turning a perfectly good animation into an 'intrusive
animation'. Because we often have no control over the user's hardware we have
2 options, stay conservative and optimize things that improve the UX for
everyone or ignore the possibility that certain users will have a bad
experience and push forward with such animations.

Unfortunately, many product owners tend to build for only the 'happy path'
scenario and choose the latter.

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jack1243star
Many problems addressed won't exist in the first place, had the UI world not
chase after those flat designs. Static UI elements work as great, without the
need for enhancement using non-realtime animations, which will be inconsistent
between platforms.

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awinter-py
hmm -- the DOM time-complexity that comes from motion is not worth it in most
cases. We have material design because google needed something delightful to
combat IOS swipe physics, not because it's useful.

Scrolling is useful. Every other kind of animation is painful to serious
users.

If anything, UI changes should blink for a second to show that they happened.
This (and every other notification+delay) is a boon to novice users who don't
yet know 'where to look' to get feedback about their change.

All delays are annoying to experts who just want to get to the next screen and
don't need a supercomputer in their pocket to send emails & read proquest.

~~~
radley
I must disagree. Developers / data people want the fastest, most immediate
response to data. But for the general population, animations bring content to
life, making the experience fun and enchanting.

The key is knowing how much and how little to apply. We're in a new age for UI
animation, so there's much to figure out.

~~~
awinter-py
Content brings content to life. If someone emails me a poem I don't need gmail
to do a dance.

On the day I need a twitching paperclip at the bottom of my screen I won't be
setting my time machine to 'future'.

UI animations are like unskippable cutscenes in video games.

~~~
wsinks
That's the analogy! I really wish every single application had a 'turn off
animations after I use this for X amount'.

Or the OS level could have that. Ahhhhh. Zen.

