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Comment by mrob | Hacker News Reader

There's no need for animation to highlight changes. E.g. if a new item appears suddenly in a list, it can use bold text so it stands out. It can then immediately change to non-bold when you interact with it. This has the additional advantage that the change is obvious even if you were looking away when the item appeared. I've never seen a UI animation that was better than no animation.

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The problem with your proposal is that the meaning of the "bolded" item is not immediately -or perhaps even with careful thought- obvious to anyone except the person proposing the idea, or the people who have already encountered the same idea beforehand.

We don't have a widely-understood cross-cultural shorthand for annotating an item's 'newness'. By contrast, we are all familiar with objects retaining their identity while they move.

When I minimize my window in macOS, it physically transforms and is sent to its new location. I know where the window I was working on went, and I as a person would have a good reason to be able to somewhat or even mostly comprehend this even if I hadn't ever seen macOS before.

With no animation, the large and prominent window I have been using would immediately disappear with no indication where it went, and the minimized icon in the dock would be highly likely to be overlooked. It would also look almost exactly like "closing" the window, and it would be easy for an inexperienced user to think minimizing a window and closing it are the same thing. I can assure you, this blurred conceptual distinction is not an imaginary problem.

Sure, I don't personally need this animation because I'm an experienced user already. However, in almost all cases it is fundamentally flawed to approach interface design by considering only the needs and preferences of experienced users.

Why does the meaning have to be obvious to inexperienced users, at the cost of making things worse for everybody else? We don't let untrained users drive cars unsupervised, and cars are much simpler than computers. I say that considering only the needs of inexperienced users is a fundamentally flawed approach.

> I say that considering only the needs of inexperienced users is a fundamentally flawed approach.

Sure, I don't dispute that for a second. However, we seem to have moved from "UI animation is categorically worse in all cases" to something like "UI animation is categorically worse for moderate-to-experienced users".

A simple method to make animations less frustrating for experienced users could be to speed up the animation each time it's played. The first time, the effect would be made very obvious; but with continued use, it becomes so fast that it's instant.

Someone above said that animations are fine in games. But that is not actually true. I love fallout 1/2, for example, but it is pita to wait for slow-animated enemies to chase you or attack (fire geckos, I'm looking at you!!).

Frustration comes not from animation speed (except unreasonably slow), but from animations that freeze the interface. If you buy item and it jumps into a cart; if new item arrives and inserts into a list; if you change pages with < > buttons -- it is okay if it animates, but what is not okay is that you cannot click another button or simply scroll before the end of entire animation or at least slow part of ease-in curve. UI simply has response delays because of these tail timeouts. It feels slower because you cannot train yourself to catch a right moment on ultraslow ends of ease-in -- and so you tap twice to make an action or wait extra. (edit: remember how you quickly tapped on your phone to emulate g-sync with your finger?)

So, when you click buy, item starts jumping into cart, but you can instantly go back or buy/open another item. When you change pages and tap < twice, it just scrolls/rotates/whatever twice as fast. When new items arrive, space for them expands almost instantly, and then "new" animation goes, not interfering with your actions. If new items arrive continuously, debounce on 800-1500ms to prevent animations spoiling the entire interaction. And so on.

>I love fallout 1/2, for example, but it is pita to wait for slow-animated enemies to chase you or attack (fire geckos, I'm looking at you!!).

You may be interested in this mod: http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/Sfall

I enjoyed playing Fallout 1 and 2 as a child, but I had very low standards back then. I now consider them unplayable without using this mod to speed up the animation.

Thanks, I'm using it (and a restoration project too). But some animations are still slow and annoying as hell, e.g. combat mode change or {un,}drawing a rifle when opening boxes and doors. I usually put one gun back into the inventory when in firendly location.

That's an issue with their implementation/use of animations, not animation in general.

Animations are (if done right) very useful in games. It's what makes you feel, for example, the difference between a weak damage (HP bar drops slowly) and something to watch out for (the HP bar actually shakes as a chunk is wiped out).

It also helps with immersion.

I agree (and often use the same example of cars). I believe the reason is simple and sad - UI is meant to sell your product (or more likely these days, service). UI and UX panders to new users because that's who they have to impress; after purchase/subscribe decision is made, their feedback rarely matters (and there are plenty of ways to make them stick around, including exploiting sunk cost and network effects). Add to that the fact that regular users accept what they're given, because they have little experience to know things could be better, and you have a perfect recipe for UIs promoting sellability over user productivity.

Moreover, users tend to protect what they're given. It is not unusual to hear probably they know better against your criticism of ui, physical (like in cars) or on-screen. Or even worse, lower grade touch screen. People believe that manufacturers are gods of knowledge and engineering, because of that same marketing I think.

> When I minimize my window in macOS, it physically transforms and is sent to its new location.

That use of animation is okay, but to make your product accessible, just make sure that there is a way to turn off the animation. Easing effects and simulation of real physical motion are not needed. Apple's out-of-the-box UIs are unusable to me. My window manager (i3wm) has no animation.

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