Motion design in mobile apps has acquired a new and important meaning these days. No, those flashy and often distracting kinds of website animations of earlier times are no longer popular. The new popularity of animation and motion design can be attributed their clean bearing, smooth and easy to use look and feel. Whatever you used to know about GIFs and flashy web animations, they became a matter of past.
Animation serves an important role in UX only when you use it sparingly and appropriately. It is capable of enhancing user experience (UX) only when you can maintain the perfect economy and control. Well, over the past few years we have seen a number of new trends surfacing in motion design and animation. Technically, designers are now more equipped to incorporate motion with the help of HTML5 and CSS3. But still, making the right balance with motion design maintaining the clutter free look remains a challenge. Let us offer below some of the most effective tips to incorporate motion design to make a better UX.
Begin with Sketching Down the Concept
The concept is the core of a good motion design. But a good concept needs to be penned down in a detailed sketch for further analysis and development.
At this stage, you need to sketch outlines of the key frames and then consider how it would look, feel and engage the audience. You can think of any flaws in the UI that can be improved by the animation. Now when you are certain about the specific elements you need to animate and the objectives you want to fulfill, then only you can go to the next step of prototyping.
Using Animation for Page Transition
Using animation in page headers and during page loads is one of the effective ways to add some fun elements in your website without really looking junky. This actually helps to experience a smooth transition from one page to the other. This type of animation not only loads quickly but they also minimize the time gap experienced while loading.
Animation in Infinite Scrolling
Infinite scroll is a design trend that has gained popularity with many websites. This is partial because of the ease to keep all website information in a single place. Another reason is to make the navigation simple without a list of menus and submenus.
Motion can be intuitively incorporated in infinite scrolling website. If the page is designed to clean and clutter free, a little use of motion while scrolling down can be intuitive. Instead of using too many colors, using subtle and pleasing shades at the backdrop can allow the right punch with foreground motion.
Motion Video
Static or rudimentary animations work just fine but you always have better ways to incorporate motion. Motion video is one such way. An animated video can deliver a really eye grabbing cool visual experience. Motion videos are often intuitive enough to tell visitors about the brand and the products in a quickest possible way.
Bringing Charts & Graphs to Life
Charts and so-called graphs cannot look dull and commonplace when you tweak them with little motion. Just the way hovering effects made the CTA buttons and clickable elements interesting, a bite-sized movement can help making the infographics more entertaining. Besides grabbing visitor’s attention, charts with motion effects can guide visitors to engage with actions meant for business conversion.
Slow-Motion Animation for Ambiance
The slow-motion animation is interesting ways to incorporate motion into your web design. It can be done in more ways than one. Just by moving page elements slowly over a sustained period you can grab attention and make him concentrate on the moving elements. Just as whispers sometimes make our ears more attentive what is being said, slow motion catches our attention more acutely than static or normally moving objects on the screen.
You can make use of slow-motion animation just as the moving background image on the web page. Or, you can also use it to move faster gradually. Actually, a difference of pace in moving objects quickly grabs our attention and we tend to look more intently towards such slow moving elements than other usual elements.
Interactive Prototype
For a good design, you need, to begin with, a detailed sketch of the concept followed by a prototype. Now, interactive prototypes have become popular as they readily allow seeing the flaws in motion design. An interactive prototype offers a more lively approach to looking at each and every design elements.
Modular Scrolling
What modular scrolling does? It offers control to the users over the animation used on your website. By allowing users scrolling through individual panels modular scrolling allows more control. If a website serves diverse industries or individuals with a variety of focus areas, then such scrolling becomes helpful as everyone can choose to scroll the panel of his choice to browse.
Motion Design made from filling interesting
Finally, when it comes to filling up forms, motion design takes care of the reluctance and monotony involved in the process. Actually, nobody likes filling up forms simply because it is time-consuming without nothing as entertaining. Well, conversational robots to some extent addressed this problem by making intuitive conversation with the audience. Now, motion design also came as an intuitive way to make the task interesting for the audience. A little use of animation can turn on the casual mood and push visitors to fill it up.
Animation in Anchor Text
Hovering effect on the CTA buttons and clickable areas has been popular and already became common now. But even the simple hovering effect on anchor texts or buttons can be given more stylized effect. Just by hovering on the anchor text it can light up, blink or can quiver a little to grab your attention on the anchor text then and there. This prevents moving away from the areas where the visitors should have paid attention. As attention-grabbing and guiding the visitors towards actionable button became more important for UX designers, such intuitive hovering effects on clickable text can be truly effective at times.
Juned Ghanchi
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