Title: Your UI isn’t a Disney Movie
Context: Just because something can move, doesn’t mean it should.
Synopsis: In much the same way a starving man can eat himself to death when finally presented with unlimited food after a prolonged period of want, UI designers can also self destruct under the famine to feast opportunity that contemporary interface development technologies often offer. After being lost in the desert of static, transitionless controls and page layouts, being given the opportunity to finally — FINALLY! — shift, move, nudge, transform, expand, and/or slide a button here or a panel there, of course we’re going to do so! This is what we’ve been waiting breathlessly for. We want to move all the things. Yet, the line between beneficial and gratuitous use of animation is generally plain to the competent designer’s sensibility. We just need to practice sensible restraint or our user interfaces might come off looking like they were designed by Mickey Mouse instead of a trained professional.
Best Bit: “There’s a reason why an airplane’s navigational UI doesn’t use any animation. Adding an unnecessary 300ms animation to your UI probably won’t kill anyone, but it will annoy your users far more than it will ‘delight’ them!”
bill
But what will 1/2 of the “UX” posts on Dribble be reduced to if there aren’t any cool animations to show? How will we “delight” everyone? With solid usability and enough foreground/background color/contrast difference? As if!
InteractiveMark
Rage, rage against the dying of usability! :-)