
iOS designers: What is it with all the motion lately? - tobiasrenger
https://herbsutter.com/2017/10/17/11-is-the-new-7-ios-designers-what-is-it-with-the-motion-fetish-please-stop-making-us-motion-sick/
======
bsaul
To me, the greatest inconvenience of iOS 11 is the keyboard lag on the iPad. I
really don't know what happened, but it made the OS completely unusable on an
iPad Air. For a damn _keyboard_. I tried turning some autocomplete options
off, but it didn't change a lot.

I'm the author of a B2B app running on iPad only, but those kind of things
makes me really think about going cross-platform for my next major release. I
don't see myself recommending my (pro) users a platform where an OS release
makes typing text in a text field unusable.

~~~
cageface
iOS's keyboard is the worst thing about the entire platform IMO. The first
thing I do on any new device is replace it with the Google Keyboard. Text
entry is one area where Android really outshines iOS.

~~~
rlanday
This is clearly a matter of preference. After using the iOS keyboard for
years, I hate typing on Android.

~~~
untog
Obviously it's a matter of preference, but I agree with the OP that the Google
Keyboard (GBoard, it's on iOS) is far superior to the Apple keyboard.
Unfortunately it's been a little unreliable since iOS 11 came out.

~~~
joshuata
I regularly have issues with gboard where it won't accept the first 5-10
keypresses when I open it. It's especially bad within Google's own apps.

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JoshMnem
The problem is everywhere now. I think the trend originated with ideas from
Material Design. There is no aesthetic restraint with animation these days,
and it's terrible for accessibility.

It's bleeding over into Windows 10 too, which I just noticed a few days ago
when helping someone with his computer.

It's bleeding over into Firefox, where small UI elements that are not the main
area of focus are starting to animate. Chrome is even worse with animation by
"flashing" elements after the user's focus has already moved to other parts of
the UI.

Animating nearly everything on a page is like putting 4 inches of frosting on
top of a cake that is only 4 inches thick.

Designers should be thinking: how can I _minimize_ animation so that it only
serves its essential purpose: bringing attention to the current area of focus
in the most inconspicuous way where there is no other way to make things
clear. Only one part of the page should animate at a time, and it shouldn't
animate after the user's focus has left that area. There shouldn't be a delay
between a user's action and animation, because that can cause a kind of
"animation shock" in people who have motion sensitivity. Don't create elements
suddenly get shoved into a user's face at high speed, especially with "boingy"
easings.

Consider whether people are reading your content or playing a game. If they
are supposed to read something, minimize animation -- think: "how can I remove
as much animation as possible?". If they are playing a game, animation is
fine.

Parallax can be nauseating. I wanted to like Google Plus, but had to stop
using it once the animation got out of control. I stopped using Trello for
mobile because of it. I close a lot of websites due to the animation, and
Android phones have become really hard to use.

See also:

\-
[https://www.webaccessibility.com/best_practices.php?technolo...](https://www.webaccessibility.com/best_practices.php?technology_platform_id=11)

\-
[http://simplyaccessible.com/article/animations/](http://simplyaccessible.com/article/animations/)

~~~
_greim_
> Animating nearly everything on a page is like putting 4 inches of frosting
> on top of a cake that is only 4 inches thick.

I love this analogy. In my view, animation (in non-game apps) should be felt
rather than seen. It should be used to soften sharp edges over time. It really
bugs me for example when a dialog fades away or slides off the screen in an
excruciatingly slow manner when I hit the "X".

~~~
JoshMnem
It can be fun to play with CSS transitions, but it's a terrible idea to use
them in practice in probably about 95% of cases. Animation is basically visual
spam.

I recently saw one footer bar that would appear by dropping down from the top
of the page after the user started scrolling. Then when the user clicked the
X, the bar would slowly float up, then fall back down (off the screen)
quickly. The situation has become completely absurd.

------
rbinv
The worst thing about all these iOS animations is that they seem to have some
sort of invisible animation frames after having (visibly) finished, blocking
any user input for an additional couple hundred milliseconds even though
nothing is (visibly) happening. Driving me nuts since iOS 7, even with
"reduced motion" active. Same thing on the Apple Watch.

~~~
dilap
Yep, nail on the head.

You should never, ever throw away user input. All reasonable: Cut the anim
short on input, respond during anim, buffer the input and respond after the
anim. But whatever you do, don't just throw out the user input! It's a
terrible experience when your phone ignores you. It feels buggy, and creates a
sense of anxiety/hesitation when using your phone.

Apple used to be really good at this, but they lost the religion starting in
7...

------
fny
Discussing whether the animations are worthwhile is a red herring.

The real issue is that iOS is not respecting the users choice to disable
motion, and in cases where a user suffers from a motion intolerance, it's
absurd they have no way to disable motion to meet their needs.

~~~
sockgrant
You make it sound like they're choosing to ignore the setting.

It's software... I'm pretty sure what's happening is a new feature gets built,
with animation, and the team responsible forgets that there's a "reduce
animation" setting that they should take into account.

I have an iOS app that has a disable animations setting and I frequently
forget it exists. My app is a few million less lines of code and a couple
thousand less engineers than iOS.

~~~
fny
I totally agree, but I hold different standards for developers of apps than
the developers of operating systems. I'd expect that at some point in the QA
process software goes through an accessibility check, especially at a company
like Apple.

------
jbob2000
I thought this comment was interesting:

>Back in the days of NeXT, Steve Jobs used to make developers use the least
capable machine supported by the target product on which they worked. This
kept developers “honest” and attentive to performance issues and hardware
constraints. I think Apple could benefit from doing the same thing with iOS
developers.

Can we get designers to do the same? Every designer I've seen has amazing
monitors, so they design things with like a million shades of gray, which ends
up looking completely washed out on people's 5 year old thinkpad.

~~~
zappo2938
My ultimate goal is apps for education which makes using a $100 piece of dirt
Chromebook, which I'm typing on now, an attractive machine to use. I can
develop with it using the Cloud9 cloud based IDE. It's not that bad if I
connected to a TV for extra screen real estate. A month ago I learned
something very important. The mouse cursor stopped showing, so the machine
doesn't have a mouse or tack pad. Now I have to tab through web pages which
have limited my usage to Hacker News, Google Music, and Netflix which accounts
for 90% of the usage before it broke. I can't use it to bank or pay my bills,
wikipedia, or Facebook. It really does make me as a web developer ask the
question how can I make this better and make more of my products more
accessible.

~~~
candiodari
$100 piece of dirt chromebook + cloud services = $100 + $600 per year to
actually use it.

Why not use a $200 secondhand lenovo that can actually run programs and give
them a real system ?

When I was very small I actually got an intro to programming class on
mainframe. You could only work while connected. It was horrible, since you
could only do exactly what the teacher said, there was essentially no cpu
capacity available (and if multiple 7 year olds who've never seen a program
run before complained about it, it's bad).

It was beyond worthless. Stop the walled garden, especially for programmers.

~~~
thanatropism
My Samsung Chromebook is featherlight, lighter than my iPad. So it has
replaced it as a PDF reader. An iPad-priced Chromebook with cell network
support would be a dream purchase.

~~~
candiodari
Something that can't store a PDF library locally just wouldn't cut it for me.
I travel too much and internet just isn't guaranteed.

------
kleer001
Personally I think it's busy work. Lots of problems have been solved, but
there's still lots of people to employ. And people without a problem to solve
get antsy, feel bored, and move on to other departments or other companies
entirely.

A software project without enough time, money, or staff wouldn't run into
these problems. They'd certainly have their own problems, but graphical bloat
wouldn't be one of them. Which is echoed by another comment here about Steve
Jobs forcing designers to work on minimal spec machines.

~~~
brudgers
I agree with the idea that it is busy work, but I think it is not so much a
matter of the problems being solved as it is easier for everyone to focus on
animation than on solving those problems. The hard problems are mostly at the
layers above those where designers have authority (or input) and creating
animations is satisfying because it is creative and the layers above designers
get part of that satisfaction because they get to have input (or authority)
over the final design product.

Yet, it is also the case that good design comes from making the problem more
complicated than it seems at first glance. Even worse bad design can come from
there or from a naive approach...which is to say that bad design is easy. What
the article misses is that it is also ubiquitous.

The cottage industry of talking about bad design survives because complaining
is easy. Looking at the average design and figuring out what it got right
despite other possible shortcomings is hard and doesn't make for good blog
posts. It is hard because it requires critique rather than criticism, empathy
for design constraints, and judging works by a criteria other than "What I
like."

------
johansch
Not to downplay these people's problems, but I found this post from 2013 (in a
thread discussing these issues in iOS 7) interesting:

[https://discussions.apple.com/message/23184178#message231841...](https://discussions.apple.com/message/23184178#message23184178)

"Motion sickness and dizziness are relatively common in the human population
and statistics show that some 20% of population is affected. The two major
causes are inner ear and/or visual oculor motor system.

People experiencing motion sickness in front of a small screen like a
smartphone will also likely have same or bigger symptoms during other life
situations: elevators, roofs, boats, reading in a car, watching a movie with a
fast moving object, watching kids while they have fun in a carousel, etc.
Other related symptoms might be photophobia (excess light sensitivity) causing
to use sunglasses even in cloudy days, making a rapid head movement,
difficulties in evaluating distances for example while parking a car, etc.

Unfortunately it is not a specific technology, it is the inability of some
people to meet the requirements of some environment situations.

I would suggest to investigate with a clinical evaluation by an
otorhinolaryngologist (specialized in vestibular disorders) and an optometrist
(specialized in vision therapy).

I have seen and treated a huge number of people with motion sickness disorders
and the treatment is relatively easy allowing a more enjoyable life not just
watching a smartphone screen but also in many other life situations."

~~~
acqq
> I have seen and _treated_ a huge number of people with motion sickness
> disorders and _the treatment is relatively easy_

Please write about this (what is the treatment). In my case, I'm not aware of
having other problems apart from not being able to watch hand-camera made
(intentionally "shaky") series and films. And searching for the switches to
turn off the animations in software. Moreover, I don't have problem with 3D
movies if the screen refresh rate is high enough. It's also not a regular
"motion sickness" as I don't have any problem whatsoever in cars or planes.
But I can assure you that the sensation in the cases I've listed (on the
screens) really exists.

In my case, turning off the UI animations solves the problem. Unless it can't
be done.

~~~
Tempest1981
Not sure if this is what he was referring to, but possibly BPPV.
[http://vestibular.org/understanding-vestibular-
disorders/typ...](http://vestibular.org/understanding-vestibular-
disorders/types-vestibular-disorders/benign-paroxysmal-positional-vertigo)

See the section on "Canalith repositioning" here:
[https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/884261-treatment](https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/884261-treatment)

------
alekratz
Just to note: the author is not some random blogger; Herb Sutter is _the_ C++
guy at Microsoft and on the ISO C++ standards committee. What he says
definitely holds some weight.

~~~
tinus_hn
> Herb Sutter is the C++ guy at Microsoft

Surely he must be more qualified for UI design than Apples UI designers!

------
pier25
We are living in an era where UI/UX designers and developers take themselves
too seriously.

I'm all for beauty and design, but animations should be used with a purpose
and not simply because it looks cool.

------
makecheck
Animations should never _cause_ delays that the user wouldn’t encounter
otherwise. If an app legitimately takes 0.2 seconds to launch and animation
makes it feel nicer, maybe fine. If however the OS is _arbitrarily preventing
me from interacting with the home screen until animation is done_ , someone
should be fired.

------
coldcode
Our apps have way too much gratuitous animations, the end step has 5 serial
animations before you can finally push the last button. It takes 2.5 seconds
to get there. I hate it but have no choice, the interaction folks want all
these sliding, fading things.

------
n3dst4
I just tried out the "Reduce Motion" setting and tbh I might leave it on.

~~~
joshuata
I have kept that setting for the last 3 years, but with iOS 11 it has been
causing frame drops and glitchy-ness with the new iPad control center and
multitasking setup.

------
werber
I don't suffer from motion sickness but it was a jarring change for me.

------
gdubs
The home screen fade-in animation reminds me of the “Hitchcock Effect”, where
the camera movement and zoom go opposite each other. So every time I open my
phone it feels overly dramatic.

------
tambourine_man
Core Animation makes it easy, perhaps too easy

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libeclipse
But it's not really a problem, is it?

If your wife gets ill from looking at an animation, I feel as though she needs
medical help, and a specialist device that's tuned for special accessibility
needs. Not workarounds.

~~~
mikeash
A lot of people suffer from motion sickness, and Apple tries really hard to be
suitable for special accessibility needs.

------
whipoodle
Hmm, I find it fairly tasteful and not gratuitous.

~~~
Upas
You might also not suffer from the same sensitivity to motion as the author's
wife.

I think the main takeaway here is that there is a "Reduce Motion" setting
which is not being respected in some cases in iOS 11.

~~~
whipoodle
Sure, another way to put that might be that I am more appreciative of how it
works than the wife is.

I agree about the setting, I just don’t think one way of feeling about the
animations is more valid than another.

~~~
n3dst4
Right, but _another_ way of looking at it is that you might not suffer from
the same sensitivity to motion as the author's wife.

My point is that this isn't an aesthetic choice where your opinion is as good
as mine - they are reporting an actual problem that they are having with the
software.

------
fatboy10174
You dont get these issues with windows phone.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
This was written by Herb Sutter who is the C++ guy at Microsoft, and he
doesn't have a Windows phone.

Bill Gates doesn't have a Windows phone.

Windows doesn't even want to make new Windows phones.

Time to stop talking about Windows phones.

