A Brief Insight Into Motion UI

Around the world, legions of old-school creatives who witnessed the epic rise of The Flash in the early 2000s let out an emotional sigh. To hell with those flash security risks. 

 The irony is that Flash was the original, and later the last, pioneer of motion picture-quality animation and motion on the web. Designing in Flash meant that the shackles in the design community were loosened, creativity was allowed to flourish freely, eye-catching became pervasive across the web, and the brand’s Flash presentation pages were ubiquitous. 

 The reality of Flash’s death was a slow and painful experience: when Steve Jobs hit the coffin for the first time in 2007 when the iPhone came out without Flash support. Since then, Adobe has quietly shut down life support for the plugin as the broader web design community, aware of the development to come, has gradually switched to HTML5. 

 Over the next decade, motion design and animation matured and matured; Designers have moved from the holidays of bandwidth-killing transitions and animations (often pointless) to today, where it is generally accepted that motion design should be used with caution and ultimately provide a functional benefit to end users.

What is Motion UI? 

The UI of the Movement is the art of the use of movement and animation in an interface to guide the user experience and communicate a sequence, the next step, transition or action for a digital product. It is super annoying if our eyes are attracted to a special movement and an animation on a website that only serves to degrade the user’s functional experience.

Motion UI Today 

From the beginnings of movement on the web with the use of the tag (to scroll text sideways) to today’s cinema-quality Motion UI frames used by everyday web designers, movement has become one of the most important tools for providing engagement and interaction. the network evolves. 

 Today, most Web Interface movements are controlled through the browser using CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript frames. This eliminates the need for third-party plugins or video players to display movements and animations. 

 As the online battle rages between platforms and brands to get our attention, the need to use motion and animation to penetrate the noise of the web has been more important than ever. When used with caution, Motion UI is a powerful enabler of beautiful user experiences and can turn a superficial, static interaction into an unforgettable moment of deep branding. 

 Many innovative brands obsessed with great user experiences have published their own design guidelines with standards and best practices around motion, including Google’s Material Design, Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, and the incredibly motion-oriented Lottie framework. by AirBNB. These guidelines attempt to combine the classical principles of good design with the innovations and possibilities of technology and science. Ultimately, it’s about delivering a consistent experience across platforms and devices.

Storytelling through Motion 

Movement can be used to tell a story and evoke emotions. Storytelling is a powerful way to drive engagement online, but at its core, a story is simply a series of events. As digital experts, we strive to deliver the most intuitive stories to website users and Motion is the perfect guide. Motion and animated storytelling can create exceptionally aesthetically pleasing moments, but they can also enhance incredibly functional user experiences. 

 Motion UI can play a vital role in the way a user interacts with a digital platform. Our eyes follow the movement and instinctively we look for visual and narrative cues to follow. We also know that movement is much more memorable to visitors than static images, so we can use it not only for simple visuals like text and shapes but also to take people on a journey and activate their visual sensory receptors with motion sequences to better communicate more memorable ideas.

Microinteractions through Motion 

Micro-interactions are those subtle and specific moments of interaction with a user interface that connect the experience with the next step that a user must take. This could mean tapping a hamburger menu icon, dragging down navigation, swiping left or right, or turning control on or off. Movement makes these interactions seem more organic and less abrupt. 

 “Microinteractions are an exercise in reluctance to do as much as possible with as little as possible. Accept limitations and focus your attention on doing one thing well. ” (Dan Saffer, author of Microinteractions)

When implemented correctly, the micro-interactions that motion and animation make possible are barely perceptible to the user, until the user is faced with the problem of their absence. Other examples of micro-interactions include animated buttons, switches, system status animations, charging indicators, and other notifications. 

 Microinteractions help improve the overall usability of a product. They inform users that tasks were completed successfully; Buttons were pressed, switches were moved, or required form fields were completed.

 Creating Anticipation with Motion 

Forward-thinking design means creating an interface that addresses user needs before they actually express them. Motion UI is a great tool for educating users and highlighting relationships between elements, availability of actions, and results of actions. 

 Motion helps guide visitors through the website or app experience, with movements and animations that intuitively communicate what to focus on, what to do next, and what are the most important elements on a page. 

 Motion creates an understanding of the flow between two elements and can be used for the hierarchy and connection between navigation, element transitions, function changes, and other effects. Motion is used to hold attention while waiting for a page to load, creating the illusion of speed, and making users more likely to wait patiently for the page content to display.

Bringing Data to life through Motion 

For most of us, data (in its purest form of zeros and ones) is visually boring. Our brains do not instinctively try to process tables and complex numbers when they are first presented to us on a screen. Most people find it difficult to get excited about tabular data on a screen. 

 Enter the motion user interface. Visualizing data with motion provides both aesthetic satisfaction and interpretive ease of use, and essentially brings the data to life. Data can be represented using shapes, colours, and colour gradients, bringing tabular layouts to life through extensive data visualizations and dynamic movements.

Brand Recognition 

One of the most effective uses for Motion UI is to increase brand awareness. Many innovative brands are using Motion UI to add a level of recognition and depth to their user interfaces, evoke an instinctive memory of the brand, and generate a much higher emotional response than would be achieved with static images. Motion design ensures that digital interactions stay true to the brand and reach the consumer. It’s essentially a way to deliver a consistent brand narrative to consumers through a consistent user experience.

Conclusion

So does this more contemporary focus on utility and functionality means that the glorious days of using Motion to create epic visual appeal and immersive visual experiences on the web are over, or are there still ways to use Motion UI to amaze and delight? To visitors? ? diminish user experience with deceptive distractions?
The answer is that movement is absolutely fundamental to the web experience of the future and designers should use it to bring the static and monotonous world of web design to life. Once basic user needs are met and a digital product performs as expected (or better), If you have any projects in mind regarding the above, contact us.