The way your user interface looks makes a huge difference as it attracts the users. Fabulous animation makes the interface user-friendly & grabs attention, but it should not distract users from the app itself.
Basic Goals of Motion Design
Let's see how animation can make your app a phenomenal software solution.
Explain The Logic
The primary task of any animation is to help the user navigate the mobile app by understanding the relationships between interface elements. Motion design allows an app to give users feedback in response to their actions to explain what's happening. Moreover, animations can show the hierarchy of pages & screens and catch attention to essential features & elements.
Ensure User Engagement
Animations can be used to motivate a user to take actions that are essential for a business. Allowing users to react to Facebook posts is vital for
app development companies to ensure interactions & engagement.
Deliver A Unique Experience
In-app motion design can ensure a memorable and thrilling user experience. Animations can even reinforce brand identity by highlighting the benefits of a particular brand and communicating their value to users.
In this blog, we will share our expertise in designing stunning & useful animations. To develop & enhance useful animations, let's understand their position and function in your app.
Types Of Animations
1. Visual Feedback
Visual feedback is vital for any UI. Visual, audible, & haptic feedback from an app makes users feel in control. Visual feedback even serves a more straightforward function: it shows that your app is working correctly. For instance, when a button grows or a swiped picture moves in a particular direction, it's clear that the app responds to the user's input.
Mobile users have mostly encountered situations when they click in an app & nothing happens. Clicking repeatedly in a shopping app may increase the item's quantity in the shopping cart. These kinds of situations indicate a terrible user experience. But animations can avoid them by rendering proper visual feedback.
2. Function Change
This animation type displays how an element changes with user interaction and is best when describing how the element's function changes. Functional animations are mostly used with icons, buttons, and other small design elements.
3. Structure & Navigation
Several mobile apps have complex structures, & it's the designer's task to ease navigation as much as possible. Animations can be super useful for fulfilling this task. If your animation displays where an element is hidden, a user can easily find it.
4. Elemental Hierarchy & Their Interactions
Animations are ideal for showing parts of the interface and describing how they communicate with one another. Every element has its purpose & position within the animation.
All animations must portray how elements are linked. Building the elemental hierarchy & interactions between them is crucial for an intuitive interface.
5. Visual Prompt
Animations give hints on how to interact with elements. It's mainly important to offer visual cues when an app has an unforeseeable pattern of interaction.
6. System State
There are a ton of processes happening in your app's backstage. Data is being installed from the server; calculations are occurring, and so on. Your job is to let the user know that the app hasn't stopped or crashed & show ongoing processes.
Visual signs of progress provide the user control over the app's performance. Ideally, your app's process should be accompanied by a different animation.
7. Fun Animations
Fun animations can be good or bad. Mobile app developers mostly used senselessly and can severely complicate app development. However, a unique animation can be attractive for users and make your app stand out. It's one of the hidden tools designers can use when they want users to love their products.
There are 2 things to keep a note of while designing a fun animation. First, you should ensure it doesn't overshadow or hide your app features. Second, it shouldn't take much of a user's time to complete an action or be tricky to manage the animated interface.
Main Principles of Animation Design
To make effective animations in your app, note these principles that were initially conveyed by Walt Disney but can be successfully implemented in UI design.
1. Material
Display what your element includes: light or heavy, flat or multi-dimensional, rigid or flexible? Make users understand how your UI elements communicate with one another.
2. Trajectory Of Movement
Define the nature of movements. General principles show that inanimate mechanical objects normally have a straight trajectory while living creatures have more flexible & less consecutive trajectories. Determine which impression you want your UI to give & then stick to it.
3. Timing
Timing is one of the essential considerations while designing animations. In real-life, physical things are immovable as per the linear motion rules as they need time to fast-track and slow down. Use curves to move your objects automatically.
4. Focus Of Animation
Focus attention on a specific area of the screen. For instance, a blinking icon can notify a user. This animation type is used in interfaces with many elements & details, where there is no other way to make one stand out.
5. Follow-through & Overlapping
The follow-through is an action's conclusion. Objects do not rapidly start or stop moving. Each motion can be shown as a set of smaller moves, with each part of the item moving at its own pace.
Overlapping means the start of the second action before the first one completes. This keeps the viewer's interest since there's no dead time between actions.
6. Secondary Actions
The secondary actions are similar to the follow-through & overlapping principles. Secondary actions can carry out a primary animation. Secondary actions make the design more radiant, but they can be distracting if you aren't careful.
7. Ease-in/out
Ease-in/out is a fundamental principle of design that's equally essential for animations in general & UI animations in app development. This principle is often neglected.
This principle derives from the fact that real-life objects can't start moving or stop instantly. Each item needs some time for acceleration & deceleration.
Final Words
In this blog, we've discussed animation types & animation design principles that can help you make a unique & useful app animation. Hyperlink InfoSystem has
one of the top app developers 2021 to help you in your design process; we'll be glad to help you with the entire development cycle as per your requirements.