Motion design is not just about making things look cool or adding some flair to your interface. It's also a powerful way to communicate, guide, and engage your users through your design. In this article, you'll learn how to incorporate motion design principles into your design thinking process, from ideation to prototyping to testing.
Motion design is the use of animation, transitions, and effects to create dynamic and interactive visual elements that convey meaning, emotion, and feedback. Motion design can enhance the usability, accessibility, and aesthetics of your design, as well as create a distinctive and memorable brand identity. Motion design can also help you achieve your design goals, such as increasing engagement, retention, conversion, or satisfaction.
Motion design can help you solve some of the common challenges and opportunities in design, such as providing affordance, feedback, navigation, and emotion. Affordance can be achieved by having an element change color or shape when hovered or clicked. Feedback can be provided through spinners or loading bars to indicate progress, while a checkmark or a red cross can signify success or failure. Navigation can be guided through slide-in menus or page transitions that show the relationship between screens or sections. Emotion can be created with a bounce, a spring, or a ripple to create a playful effect, while a snap, a shake, or flash can create tension.
When I add movement to my designs, I must ensure that in every frame, I have a unity of elements. I believe in design movement helps capture the viewer’s eye throughout the composition. Movement keeps a viewer engaged and provokes a different thought process, yes, it certainly can be achieved in graphic design alone, but it resonates deeper when we apply motion graphics. Motion design means I am using more (ranged) components to draw interest throughout my piece. For example, recurrence, in time and space, using several different elements that you see on the screen at that current moment or offering an assortment of imagery in what you may see next.
Incorporating motion design principles into your design thinking process requires following basic guidelines and best practices. Motion should have a clear purpose that aligns with design goals and user needs. It should also be simple and subtle, avoiding unnecessary or excessive motion. Additionally, motion should be appropriate and relevant to the context and content of your design. Lastly, motion should be smooth and responsive, optimized for different devices and browsers to ensure quality performance.
To ideate motion design concepts, you need to use some creative and collaborative techniques such as sketching, storyboarding, and wireframing. Sketching is a fast and easy way to represent your motion ideas with simple shapes, arrows, and annotations. Storyboarding involves illustrating and sequencing your motion ideas with a series of frames or panels that show the key moments and transitions. Wireframing is a way to structure and layout your motion ideas with low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes that show the elements and interactions of your motion. You can use various tools to create your sketches, storyboards, and wireframes, and add notes or captions to describe your motion.
To prototype motion design solutions, you need to take advantage of advanced and interactive tools. Animation is a great way to create and edit your motion ideas, using keyframes, curves, timelines, and layers. You can use animation tools like After Effects, Lottie, or Principle to create your animation and export or share your animation files or previews. Coding is another way to implement and customize your motion ideas using languages, frameworks, and libraries. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, or Flutter are coding tools you can use to code your motion and test or debug your motion code or output. Testing is a great way to evaluate and validate your motion ideas using methods, metrics, and feedback. Google Analytics, Hotjar, or UserTesting are testing tools you can use to test your motion and measure or collect data or insights on your motion performance or user experience.