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How do we design consistent UX motion in our digital products? How do we audit, embed and document transitions and animations in our design systems? And what makes for compelling animation while also respecting accessibility needs?
Meet SmashingConf Antwerp 2024, a friendly conference for people who love waffles, chocolate, fries and UX.
In this newsletter, we look into UX motion — guidelines, practices and tooling to design, refine and document animation. And if you’d like to dive deeper into motion, design and UX, we have a friendly SmashingConf Design & UX coming up in the magical city of Antwerp 🇧🇪 this year.
Along with our upcoming Smashing Meets Web Design next week, we’ll swoosh you away with practical insights into design!
Join us for free with Jay Demetillo and Rachel Gogel on June 18.
In the upcoming weeks and months, we have a few friendly workshops and conferences coming up, and perhaps you’d like to join in as well:
Happy reading and animating, everyone — while respecting accessibility needs, of course!
— Vitaly
1. Guide To Animation In UX
How can we create UI animations that feel natural and don’t distract users from the task they want to perform? In his practical guide to animation in UX, Taras Skytskyi explains all the rules and principles you need to be aware of to create delightful animation effects that feel just right.
The guide covers everything from animation duration and speed to easing and choreography. You’ll learn to adapt your animations to different screen sizes and platforms, how to read animation curves, and how to guide your users’ attention when transitioning from one state to another. The guide isn’t about specific use cases but rather universal principles that you can apply to all kinds of interface animations. A must-read. (cm)
2. Motion In Design Systems
At first glance, motion might seem too complex to integrate into a design system, so it is often left out of the discussion. However, with the right strategy, the workflow isn’t much different than the one you use to define color palettes or typographic scales. To help you overcome motion paralysis, Caleb Barclay shares a step-by-step guide to including motion in a design system.
Caleb’s approach involves five steps, from deciding what to add to the design system and establishing motion principles to defining a library of motion building blocks and preparing translation specs with everything developers need to build a prototype. A comprehensive roadmap that comes in handy for any design system that includes some motion. (cm)
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3. IBM Motion Design
The IBM design system is a wonderful example of enhancing a brand’s voice through motion design. It defines the foundational principles of IBM’s animation vocabulary and the feeling animation should evoke.
The IBM Design Language differentiates between productive motion, which appears professional, confident, smart, and efficient, and expressive motion, which evokes more personality and emotion. Combined, they provide a compelling contrast.
The design system also dives deeper into how to apply classic animation principles to graphic forms and tips and techniques that are universally applicable to animation. With examples, dos and don’ts, it is a great overview of what makes good animation. (cm)
4. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences
We run online workshops on frontend and UX, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.
With online workshops, we aim to give you the same experience and access to experts as in an in-person workshop from wherever you are.
As always, here’s a quick overview:
5. Motion Audits And Designing Core Actions
Lacking resources on how to set up a motion system, Dushyant Dubey researched different design systems to create a detailed plan on how to tackle the challenge. In his case study “Building a motion design system for a product company,” he grants insights into the strategy and how he and his team applied it when building the Blade motion design system.
The case study covers the entire process from planning and running a motion audit to defining motion parameters and implementing motion tokens that encapsulate specific motion behavior for component interactions. It also features plenty of examples of micro and macro interactions. A great reference to keep close. (cm)
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6. Atomic Motion Design
Another practical guide on how to set up a motion design system comes from Aviad Shahar. He shares step-by-step tips for breaking complex animations down into organisms, molecules, and atoms to create a consistent and reusable animation system.
Aviad’s approach consists of four steps that build on top of one another. First, you define standard duration tokens, then standard easing and basic animations. The basic animations can then be used to define more complex animations, and finally, by combining a couple of basic animations, you get animation patterns. If you want to see what the system looks like in action, the guide includes some practical examples. (cm)
7. Motion Design Almanac
How does the static become dynamic? How does something dead become alive? The Readymag Design Almanac explores exactly these questions through the expertise of six designers and artists.
To get to the ground of web animation, the experts, among them interaction developers, animators, illustrators, and product designers, dive deep into how to attract the viewer’s eye, reduce cognitive overload, and build visual hierarchies by applying motion. They explore animation influences from tech, art, and film and look at the work of pioneers from the history of animation. A slightly different look at animation and the animation craft. Inspiration is guaranteed. (cm)
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8. UX Motion Choreography
Another design system to dive into for all things animation comes from the folks at Brainly. With an effective duration scale, choreography guidelines, micro and macro animations, slowed-down previews, accessibility considerations, and a duration calculator, their Pencil Design System is a fantastic example of what a design system with a focus on UX motion and animation can look like.
While motion plays a crucial role in enhancing interactions and engaging users, implementing it can be a costly undertaking. To help you lower the cost of implementing motion, Brainly’s Lead UX Motion Designer, Giga Khurtislava, shares insights into how to improve the handoff process and improve collaboration between designers and engineers. (cm)
9. Recently Published Books 📚
Promoting best practices and providing you with practical tips to master your daily coding and design challenges has always been at the core of everything we do at Smashing.
In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. Have you checked them out already?
It’s here, and it’s shipping! Success At Scale, a new book by Addy Osmani. Get the book or browse the complete library.
10. Recent Smashing Articles
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf) and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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We sincerely appreciate your kind support. You rock.
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