User Interface Animation: Using Motion to Enhance User Experience

Just picture a world of 2D websites and apps that are grounded and lifeless.

Sounds boring, right? So good old User Interfaces (UIs) right? We can be thankful then that the design world has fallen in love with motion and turned the staid corridors and teaching halls of UI into a fantastical, ever fiery dance of delight.

With user interface (UI) Animation - the art of clear, purposeful movement added to interface elements - you can help create designs that feel alive, energised, and that create better user experiences (UX).

Why Animate Your UI? Here are the Benefits:

Call for Action & Enhance Engagement: Animated stuff always grabs the user's attention, thus guiding them and explaining to them the interface, helping to retain their interest. It is kind of a visual way to say: come and explore!

Better user guidance & clarity-Animation can be used as a gentle approach to explain how to do complicated tasks or specify relations between elements. Think of it as a friendly UI tour guide!

Personality -Motion can give your UI a touch of personality and brand voice making it more human and friendly. Basically, more of a differentiator that allows your brand to be distinct and resonate better with users.

Higher User Satisfaction: A proper form of UI animation can make your website or app more pleasant to interact with, and potentially lead to a better user experience.

Satisfied customers = Higher brand image loyalty

The Art of Effective UI Animation:

Functionality over Flare: No animation for the sake of it! Every animation has to be meaningful and must point contribute to the goal of the better usability or user understanding.

Subtle & Seamless: No over-the-top animations, please. Select small movement matched with the designs that aids in user flow.

Key Lesson: Keep all animations in you UI consistent to provide a uniform user experience. It would be no different than a movie that changed animation styles every scene.

Be Mindful of Performance: Loading animations that are too large, or complex, can slow down loading times. In order to ensure animations are smooth and performant on all devices, you need to optimise them.

Ready to Get Animated?