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And there's your answer. The average HN user and the average person are very far apart. I personally love animation as part of good design, but I know plenty o

by Niksko 11y ago

And there's your answer. The average HN user and the average person are very far apart. I personally love animation as part of good design, but I know plenty of people that don't care. Even non-tech people I know say things like 'I don't care how it looks, I just want it to work'. Which is a ridiculous sentiment, not because things need to be aesthetically pleasing to work well, but because aesthetically pleasing designs and good usability lead to you wanting to use an app more. It's not just vanity, it actually makes a difference to how you interact with software.

coldnebo 11y ago
I think there is also space in the middle for valid critique of gratuitous motion design. Hiding latenecy with a cute animation is fun the first time you do it. By the 100th time, it's usually just slow. I regularly out-pace guis. For example, the simple task of using google maps to go to work in the morning. This task is visually spread out with time-slowing animations that require constant active participation. It is like 5 taps made excrutiatingly long by the fact that my car is parked just far enough away from my home that wifi cuts out and the phone has to aquire 4g. Compare to Waze (also owned by Google) one tap, swipe and dialogs auto continue without needing to be "fed". I love animation and motion graphics, but I've seen many motion devs fall into the trap of "oh this is so cool, but they won't see it unless I make it a bit longer" -- and unfortunately most of the JS animation frameworks do not encourage async interaction, so interaction phases are often held hostage to the animation cycles. In these cases, I think motion design is rightly considered wasteful and not delightful.
ehnto 11y ago
Your statement, 'I don't care how it looks, I just want it to work', versus your argument against it, 'aesthetically pleasing designs and good usability lead to you wanting to use an app more' are perhaps misaligned. Usability is not supposed to be aesthetically pleasing, it can be but it is not supposed to be. It's supposed to be usable. If something is more usable by removing a microsecond delay, then it may not look as nice but it is more usable. I would prefer more usable to nicer looking. Design is absolutely not just vanity, but artificial delays absolutely do hinder usability to increase the vanity. It may not "feel" as nice, but it is objectively better to use. The Android Chrome browser is a great example. Swiping stuff around, amazing, smooth and great animations. The animations take only as long as it takes for me to use them. But when I click the button to show me more tabs, it takes a moment to swoop out, then I click and it takes a moment to swoop back in. Great, spatial awareness is introduced and it felt nice, neat. But now I have 5 tabs open and I am trying to flip between them without losing my train of thought and all those delays add up, it is now no longer as nice to use because I feel like I am ahead of my device because it's slow, when it's really just the artificial delays. You can still move up to the tab overview screen, it still gives spatial context, but the animation is not needed, and can be removed for better usability. I also feel like good animations can still exist without delay in many contexts (not all). Complete the users action instantly, show them the results instantly, but in some contexts there is room to fade out auxiliary information out more slowly. Moving up to the tab overview is a good example. The tabs can be shown instantly, and just a ghost of the previous screen could fade out behind it.
- deleted 11y ago
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by Niksko 11y ago

coldnebo 11y ago

I think there is also space in the middle for valid critique of gratuitous motion design. Hiding latenecy with a cute animation is fun the first time you do it. By the 100th time, it's usually just slow. I regularly out-pace guis. For example, the simple task of using google maps to go to work in the morning. This task is visually spread out with time-slowing animations that require constant active participation. It is like 5 taps made excrutiatingly long by the fact that my car is parked just far enough away from my home that wifi cuts out and the phone has to aquire 4g. Compare to Waze (also owned by Google) one tap, swipe and dialogs auto continue without needing to be "fed". I love animation and motion graphics, but I've seen many motion devs fall into the trap of "oh this is so cool, but they won't see it unless I make it a bit longer" -- and unfortunately most of the JS animation frameworks do not encourage async interaction, so interaction phases are often held hostage to the animation cycles. In these cases, I think motion design is rightly considered wasteful and not delightful.

ehnto 11y ago

Your statement, 'I don't care how it looks, I just want it to work', versus your argument against it, 'aesthetically pleasing designs and good usability lead to you wanting to use an app more' are perhaps misaligned. Usability is not supposed to be aesthetically pleasing, it can be but it is not supposed to be. It's supposed to be usable. If something is more usable by removing a microsecond delay, then it may not look as nice but it is more usable. I would prefer more usable to nicer looking. Design is absolutely not just vanity, but artificial delays absolutely do hinder usability to increase the vanity. It may not "feel" as nice, but it is objectively better to use. The Android Chrome browser is a great example. Swiping stuff around, amazing, smooth and great animations. The animations take only as long as it takes for me to use them. But when I click the button to show me more tabs, it takes a moment to swoop out, then I click and it takes a moment to swoop back in. Great, spatial awareness is introduced and it felt nice, neat. But now I have 5 tabs open and I am trying to flip between them without losing my train of thought and all those delays add up, it is now no longer as nice to use because I feel like I am ahead of my device because it's slow, when it's really just the artificial delays. You can still move up to the tab overview screen, it still gives spatial context, but the animation is not needed, and can be removed for better usability. I also feel like good animations can still exist without delay in many contexts (not all). Complete the users action instantly, show them the results instantly, but in some contexts there is room to fade out auxiliary information out more slowly. Moving up to the tab overview is a good example. The tabs can be shown instantly, and just a ghost of the previous screen could fade out behind it.

deleted 11y ago
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