Motion within a product experience, when done right, can be the key to a successful approach to usability.
Understanding the role of motion
As product design becomes more sophisticated, the art of motion design becomes increasingly important to create products that feel more intuitive and engaging. When I first got into UX design, I initially thought that motion and animation were specifically meant to create moments of delight in a product. As I learned more about the art of motion, it became clear to me that the effects of motion can make or break a digital experience.
Motion is vital to user-centered design
It's a well-known fact that time is money. Users don't have all day to figure out how to use your app or understand your website. People appreciate quick, easy-to-digest digital content and don't have much patience for complicated product flows or glitchy interactions. Motion graphics utilize the helpful guidance of "show, don't tell." This reduces the user's information processing abilities and lets you communicate more with less. A 900-word tutorial to explain a product experience in words can be visually communicated in less than 15 seconds. It’s a great method to make an immediate impact while respecting the user's time.
Lizard brains
Motion is highly effective to catch our attention because of our limbic cortex, aka our reptilian brains. We are psychologically hard-wired to track movement because noticing motion is what kept early humans safe.
Ways that motion aids usability
Narrative
Users experience a digital product in a linear fashion. The experience becomes a spatial framework broken into a sequence of events that tie the big picture together.
Relationship
Integrated with the narrative, relationship develops the recognition of spatial, temporal, and hierarchal elements that users perceive to guide them through a product experience.
Continuity
The user flow and the user experience rely on continuity to ensure the product feels fluid and intuitive. Continuity can be achieved on a micro-level within a scene, or on a macro-level among a series of scenes to make up the user experience.
Expectation
There are two categories in which users develop expectations: what an object is and how it behaves. As user-centered designers, our primary goal is to lessen the gap between what our users expect and what they actually experience.
Continuously learning
Motion is a beautiful, highly useful tool in designing digital experiences. During my grad studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, I learned so much from incredible design leaders and mentors like Chris Risdon and Pablo Stanley. I strive to learn more about motion every chance I can, honing this valuable skillset and adding it to my designer's toolbag. I've worked with Adobe After Effects, Principle, and even Keynote. Now, I'm learning a lot about the capabilities of Protopie, and I really like how well it works to make stunning, animated prototypes.
We owe it to our users to create seamless, simple products that are easy enough for anyone to use. Incorporating the right amount of motion in our designs not only allow for the product to be delightful and fun to use, but also more functional and logical.
Shout out to the amazing designers who inspire me:
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