Against magic: animations slow down interfaces
macwright.org
macwright.org
Most of these animations totally make sense: https://material.io/design/motion/choreography.html#transfor... Look at the 2nd "don't" at "Complex transformations" to see how great animations are.
I do however get mad with apps that use page flip transitions. Such a simple and often used feature in a reading app is super annoying and should be possible to turn off. As in many cases: the power user needs no hinting and can even live with undocumented keyboard shortcuts, but for a smooth ride you from the start you need hints.
Speeds are appropriate to the actions and even a but shorter than the numbers say, if you consider the last 1/4 to be just the slow stop of things (I hope they are already actionable there).
I like the double speed transitions android offers for devs :)
Even with ultra high speed you could use animations. One can learn from games (e.g. 1 frame smears): https://youtu.be/Mw0h9WmBlsw?t=945
To be pedantic:
Animations can introduce latency to interfaces.
This is the main point that people need to understand. So long as you aren't making the user wait (even just a few milliseconds) for an animation to happen, you should be OK.
Granted, it's easy to go overboard. I certainly prefer a cleaner UI.
Much is the same with a lot of today's application design. I don't think the author of the article would say to never use animations under any circumstance. They just need to be used sparingly to properly communicate ideas rather than merely dazzle. Material Design is probably the worst offendor as it's convinced designers to not be original and to instead rely on sets of splash/wave effects and slide animations that don't communicate but instead dazzle. I know some of this has to do with creating Android- compatible interfaces, but a lot of it ia undoubtedly caused by dazzlement and the desire to be like Google.
A related aspect of modern design is the fact that so much of it has become color palette porn, using pretty, flat colors to create graphics that would look great in a physical magazine or poster, but do almost nothing but dazzle in graphical interfaces, rather than draw the attention of users to important parts of the application. Material Design helped popularize this trend, but it was in the works before it became a thing.
Such design is massively overused and should instead be used sparingly, just as modern movies really don't need the sheer amount of CGI crap they spew if they had good ideas to communicate.
Imagine being in your car and stepping on the brakes, then having to wait for a dashboard animation to complete before the braking actually started.
There's a place for UI animations but it should be possible to turn them off once the novelty wears off.
While I like these setting and only have a few turned on, Clear Type, Transparent Drag and such, I take umbrage at the idea that my preferences are some how of lower visual quality.