With any digital design interface, web animations have become an integral component to design. Animations on web interfaces allow for a much more eye-catching design that can be achieved in subtle or bold ways of implementation. Whether a user is interacting with prominent animations on a home screen, or with a micro-animation within a scrollbar, these impactful limbs of design attain the ability to strengthen a user experience.
A Balancing Act
With any creation, no matter the medium, balance is fundamental. Thus, a UI/UX design interface is no exception. Creating a digital interface fully embraces the balancing act between functionality and a visually pleasing design. When implementing web animations, whether as a CSS or JavaScript animation, it should be purposeful and visually creative, to truly propel user-friendliness.
The movement of an animation when interacting with an interface should be short and sweet. Moreover, purposefully implementing an animation in strategic ways ensures that the impact of an animation is not overly used or too over-the-top that its causes user frustration as they embark on their journey. Finding areas on a website to include animations can vary, and that versatility can boost your design and enlighten your users.
Liven Your Loading Screen
In our fast-paced world that allows access to information at the click or tap of a button, sometimes a wait time can present itself. Although most users would rather not wait for their interface to load, it can sometimes be an unfortunate part to the experience yet incorporating an animation can liven the dreaded wait time. Animations on loading screens allow communication between your interface and the user through design. It clearly communicates to the user that what they are waiting on is loading, while also offering a visually stimulating animation to ease user frustrations, clear up any cognitive friction, and reduce bounce rates.
The creativity can range from a classic spin wheel, a colorful progress bar, a cartoon animation, or an animation that changes shapes. Every animation depends on the tonality of a website, its color story established or graphic elements, and even the shapes of a logo. Playing around with different elements can create a powerful web animation and loading screen that are personalized to your web interface or brand.
Stylize Your Scroll
Scrolling animations are another great way to implement creative UI design. When web animations are incorporated into a web page navigational scrolling, it allows an interactive and, overall, visually enticing design. Whether with one-page scrolling or parallax scrolling, animations visually engulf the user as they navigate every page. Effective scrolling animations move the user along as they scroll up and down the page through integrated movement. New graphic elements can appear, colors can transition into new hues, and content can appear in new ways with the user’s direction.
A New Way to Navigation
Animated navigation bars and menus are a subtle but effective approach to further enhance a user’s experience. Integrating motion on a navigation bar as it extends or pops out is visually inducing but also offers visual feedback. With buttons, menus, and sidebars, a swift animation can carry the user along their experience by communicating the outcome of the action they interacted with. Menus and buttons can light up with a different color, move when hovered over, or even grow in text size. With the world of navigation, a hover also eases a user’s journey with an inventive design such as, for example, a button or menu that changes shape when hovered over, a simple button that fills with color, perhaps even has a subtle explosion of shapes when clicked on.
Transform Your Text
Connecting visual design with content can be achieved beautifully with animated text. Sometimes adding that extra layer to an already unique font decision can push the boundaries of innovation. Different strategies of implementations can draw a user’s attention to the messaging of your website. Yet, as previously mentioned, balance here is paramount, as you wouldn’t want to create an animated design that makes your content abstruse; clarity is still incredibly important.
Unique styles for text animations include a moving video animation embedded and overlaid within a static text for a title, text that fills with color when clicked on, an interesting liquid effect that moves within a text, or even a title that attains motion when hovered over or clicked on. Incorporating animated text within, for example, a landing page is a great way to truly appeal to a user. It can make a great first impression with a simple, yet engaging design decision.
Web animations add that extra visually appealing layer to any digital design. With the way the digital world is constantly shifting and progressing, animations offer an engaging edge. There are many opportunities to make animations unique to a brand image, as the possibilities are endless.