Comment by yojimbo311 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yojimbo311 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm pretty sure we've already seen cases that prove that it doesn't, perhaps not enough to write a blog post about, but they are definitely out there (iOS 7's dramatic increase in the use of motion comes immediately to mind). I think it's a dangerous sentiment to promote in such a generalized sense and designers/developers need to be very cognizant of the value any animation provides to the UX. It's far too easy to justify the abuse/overuse of motion/animation, making any animation noticeable to "delight"/"tell a story" which contradicts any functional reason for implementing it.

I found the post overall to be pretty superficial. There was only one paragraph spent on describing the function/purpose of "motion design" and it placed far more emphasis on it's more marketable aspects than on it's utility to "educate your users about how to interact with particular elements".

"Motion design" is just one UI tool and one that really didn't need to be pulled out and promoted in this way IMHO as it's always been an essential tool in great software when used properly. I think it would have been great if it wasn't an "implicit announcement" but explored in detail what good "motion design" entails. It's easy to get carried away with it, and introducing motion with appropriate intent can be what makes an otherwise good application into a great one, but let's not pretend it's magic dust that can turn cole to diamonds.

Sorry people are downvoting you. I agree heartily with your reasonable dissent. This push shows every sign of being a capricious fetish and a trend. If it ever becomes notable, it will be as the nadir of a cycle heading back toward "Simplicity."

The examples in the page are utterly inessential and confusing - The back arrow rotating? Why did the arrow spin? Are there things in those directions? Can I move in those directions? No. It's clearly just because it can. It's not meaningful.

The Twitter box that spins, falls halfway, stops in mid-air then fades away when you click it? Saccharine. What is supposed to be happening? Is it "falling?" Why does it stop halfway? Why did it start rotating while it fell?

The vocabulary is all wrong.

A printer icon that gets bigger as it appears? Is it moving toward me? Is it inflatable?

A heart that fades away? Is love lost? What the hell is going on?

How can Google expect to be a design leader when they're luring people with vinegar?

I don't think these examples provide meaning - they merely grab attention as human vision has an irresistible response to movement.

And what's wrong with jump cuts? Do you suppose Hollywood and independent movie makers use them for a reason? How about human eyeballs, why do you suppose they dart around from object to object? And how about walls and doorways in architecture - why are rooms separate from one another?

This is clearly just an attempt to mimic Apple on a superficial layer.

Precisely. These are all very good examples of what to be careful of in designing any transformations or transitions. There are however, lots of incredibly useful and well designed transformations that actually enhance the overall experience and usability of an interface especially when used in conjunction with each other, fad or not.

I wasn't trying to dismiss it as a whole, but I did want to encourage the decisions to include it to be deliberate and thoughtful. That may have rubbed a few people the wrong way and I'm ok with that. I was hoping to start a reasonable dialog of where designers and developers should make an attempt to draw the line so that the end result doesn't become the equivalent of "now available in 3D!" so I really appreciate your response.

Saccharine.

Spot on! So much onanastic talk on "flourish" and "delight", and so little concrete evidence on which of these expensive gimmicks, if any, effectively guide user atention and reduce confusion between screens, or the exact opposite.

Blame the dribbblization of design [1].

[1] http://insideintercom.io/the-dribbblisation-of-design/

> which of these expensive gimmicks, if any, effectively guide user attention and reduce confusion between screens,

I'll give out one hint free: The reptilian (and hence retro-human) mind developed to perceive each room or space as a state apart from the others. We have a second level of cognition which ties nearby rooms together and therefore an innate ability to learn the layout of a building from each room. Consider the predominance of Zelda-style maps in the emotional memory of this generation. Consider the dog who seems to enter every room happy for the first time.

The webspace - in this case, that is to say hyperlinks and pages - ruptures this layout through jump-cutting between nearby spaces. A simple amendment to its construction would "match its impedance" to established mental abilities. And if you continue this metaphor, you'll see additional forms. The typical smartphones' home menus, such as Android, follow this to an extent, but really, it's only the beginning.

Getting distracted by matters such as properly interpolating frames and writing portable GPU code to do this is fun and profitable, but if you want epic design you have to step back and understand the sources of these ideas.

That twitter box I built is unrelated to the post and an old relic I've had on my site for a while. Needs to be redone given my very recent (this month) redesign :)

I was trained as an EE and got my Master's degree much later in life, studying art and design.

One of the key differences between design and engineering I learned is that people _only_ respond to what is right in front of them. (except some engineers). This is a radically different approach from e.g. "Release early, release often."

If you show people a seed and tell them it will be a plant, they'll say, "Yes, but if that seed were red, I might like it more."

These experiences taught me to keep my art and design demos under wraps until they were much, much closer to reality. It also taught me to keep my presentations congruent with no out-of-place elements. If you bill yourself as a chicken farmer and a moose walks into the frame, people won't know what you're talking about.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons designs-as-presented often appear a bit oversimplistic. It's a form of communication which doesn't tolerant nuance and irony very well. Remember how poorly the Project ARA (modular smart phone) demos came out?

I wish you luck in your ventures, sir, but I'm seeing the human canon ball rushing to put his helmet on, on the way out of the barrel.

> keep my presentations congruent with no out-of-place elements

For god's sake, this. If a demo is full of "ignore that", "don't look at that", "yeah we're going to change that", the demo is a failure.

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