The persistence of vision is both a glitch in our perception and an incredible back door to leverage at the same time. Flash the right pictures at our eyeballs at 12Hz, and they appear to be a cohesive, moving picture. Once artists and inventors were made savvy to this effect, it birthed the medium of animation, and became a ripe pocket to manifest the impossible.
{animated thing showing a frame rate increasing from 0hz to 30hz}
While computer generated animation has been abundant for over 20 years, it remains a novel discipline for typical digital consumer product makers. A vast gap between entertainment (video games / cinema) and traditional software products is still longing to close. In the entertainment sector, feeling, ergonomics, and emotion are prioritized. In consumer products, there’s focus around optimization, KPIs, and little sensitivity around feeling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_feel
As hardware and software become more robust, it has opened up more than enough processing power for software makers to create a new breed of user interfaces. These interfaces are alive. The best software is an extension of the human brain. It lets the user think naturally, conforms to behavior, and not the other way around. Humans are kinetic. They think and operate in space and time. A great user interface mirrors this, considering spatial and kinetic paradigms. Complex information can be encoded with motion. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a thousand pictures rapidly flashing at your face worth? We typically notice objects more when they move, and they recede from our attention when they're still. An animation designer can take advantage of this to direct attention.
To design animation is to sculpt time. If you’re not considering animation timing, then you’re not designing animation. A skilled animation designer sculpts with rhythm, timing, tempo, and dynamics. While animation is a vast and complex discipline, there’s a wealth of knowledge embedded in classical animation which we can draw from. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
{image of principles}
It’s helpful to think about how you lead the eye across the screen. Think about your eyeballs swiveling in their sockets, darting around, accelerating, decelerating. You’re leading the eye when you animate. You are directing attention. Guiding the eye is choreography of the virtual and physical.
Animation gives your brain clues. It suggests intent. It suggests the transformation of information. When crafted tactfully, it reinforces spatial models. A great spatial interface meets the expectations of a physical model. Spatial-kinetic interfaces require thought around the physicality of objects in the user interface. It requires thinking inside and outside the bounds of the screen.
Like designing anything, the designer must audit and consider animation choices. There's a spectrum of what's possible: Loud and quiet. Stiff and mushy. Tense or calm. Surprising or obvious. Some thing against some other fucking thing. You get it.