How can you avoid common animation challenges in mobile design?

1 Use the right tools

Not all animation tools are created equal. Some are better suited for prototyping, testing, or exporting animations for mobile development. Depending on your workflow, budget, and preferences, you might want to use tools like Adobe XD, Figma, Lottie, or Flinto. These tools can help you create realistic, responsive, and scalable animations that work well on different devices and platforms. They can also help you collaborate with developers and stakeholders, and export your animations in code-friendly formats.

2 Follow the principles of animation

Animation is not just about adding motion to your design. It's also about creating a natural, intuitive, and coherent user experience. To achieve this, you need to follow the principles of animation, such as easing, timing, spacing, anticipation, and feedback. These principles can help you create animations that are realistic, expressive, and functional. They can also help you avoid animations that are too slow, fast, abrupt, or distracting.

3 Align animation with your goals

Animation should not be an afterthought or a decoration. It should be a strategic part of your design process, aligned with your goals, brand, and user needs. Before you animate anything, ask yourself: what is the purpose of this animation? How does it support the user's task, emotion, or expectation? How does it fit with the overall style and tone of your app? By answering these questions, you can create animations that are meaningful, relevant, and appropriate.

4 Optimize animation for performance

Animation can enhance your design, but it can also affect your app's performance. If your animation is too complex, heavy, or frequent, it can slow down your app, drain the battery, or cause glitches and crashes. To avoid these issues, you need to optimize your animation for performance. Some ways to do this are: use simple shapes and transitions, avoid unnecessary elements and effects, reduce the duration and frequency of animation, and test your animation on different devices and conditions.

5 Consider accessibility and user preferences

Animation can make your design more accessible and inclusive, but it can also create accessibility and usability problems. Some users might have difficulty seeing, understanding, or interacting with your animation. Some users might prefer to reduce or disable animation altogether. To accommodate these users, you need to consider accessibility and user preferences. Some ways to do this are: use contrast, color, and text to complement your animation, provide alternative ways to access information and functionality, and offer options to adjust or turn off animation.

6 Follow the platform guidelines

Animation can make your design more unique and distinctive, but it can also create inconsistency and confusion. Different platforms have different guidelines and conventions for animation. If you ignore or violate these guidelines, you might create a design that looks out of place, unfamiliar, or incompatible. To avoid these problems, you need to follow the platform guidelines. These guidelines can help you create animations that are consistent, familiar, and compatible with the platform's features, gestures, and navigation.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?