{"rowid": 210, "title": "Stop Leaving Animation to the Last Minute", "contents": "Our design process relies heavily on static mockups as deliverables and this makes it harder than it needs to be to incorporate UI animation in our designs. Talking through animation ideas and dancing out the details of those ideas can be fun; but it\u2019s not always enough to really evaluate or invest in animated design solutions. \nBy including deliverables that encourage discussing animation throughout your design process, you can set yourself (and your team) up for creating meaningful UI animations that feel just as much a part of the design as your colour palette and typeface. You can get out of that \u201crunning out of time to add in the animation\u201d trap by deliberately including animation in the early phases of your design process. This will give you both the space to treat animation as a design tool, and the room to iterate on UI animation ideas to come up with higher quality solutions. Two deliverables that can be especially useful for this are motion comps and animated interactive prototypes. \nMotion comps - an animation deliverable\nMotion comps (also called animatics or motion mock-ups) are usually video representation of UI animations. They are used to explore the details of how a particular animation might play out. And they\u2019re most often made with timeline-based tools like Adobe After Effects, Adobe Animate, or Tumult Hype. \nThe most useful things about motion comps is how they allow designers and developers to share the work of creating animations. (Instead of pushing all the responsibility of animation on one group or the other.) For example, imagine you\u2019re working on a design that has a content panel that can either be open or closed. You might create a mockup like the one below including the two different views: the closed state and the open state. If you\u2019re working with only static deliverables, these two artboards might be exactly what you handoff to developers along with the instruction to animate between the two. \n\nOn the surface that seems pretty straight forward, but even with this relatively simple transition there\u2019s a lot that those two artboards don\u2019t address. There are seven things that change between the closed state and the open state. That\u2019s seven things the developer building this out has to figure out how to move in and out of view, when, and in what order. And all of that is even before starting to write the code to make it work. \nBy providing only static comps, all the logic of the animation falls on the developer. This might go ok if she has the bandwidth and animation knowledge, but that\u2019s making an awful lot of assumptions.\nInstead, if you included a motion mock up like this with your static mock ups, you could share the work of figuring out the logic of the animation between design and development. Designers could work out the logic of the animation in the motion comp, exploring which items move at which times and in which order to create the opening and closing transitions. \n\nThe motion comp can also be used to iterate on different possible animation approaches before any production code has to be committed too. Sharing the work and giving yourself time to explore animation ideas before you\u2019re backed up again the deadline will lead to happier teammates and better design solutions. \nWhen to use motion comps\nI\u2019m not a fan of making more deliverables just for the sake of having more things to make, so I find it helps to narrow down what question I\u2019m trying answer before choosing which sort of deliverable to make to investigate. \nMotion comps can be most helpful for answering questions like: \n\nExactly how should this animation look? \nWhich items should move? Where? And when? \nDo the animation qualities reflect our brand or our voice and tone?\nOne of the added bonuses of creating motion comps to answer these questions is that you\u2019ll have a concrete thing to bring to design critiques or reviews to get others\u2019 input on them as well.\n\nUsing motion comps as handoff\nMotion comps are often used to handoff animation ideas from design to development. They can be super useful for this, but they\u2019re even more useful when you include the details of the motion specs with them. (It\u2019s difficult, if not impossible, to glean these details from playing back a video.)\nMore specifically, you\u2019ll want to include:\n\nDurations and the properties animated for each animation\nEasing curve values or spring values used\nDelay values and repeat counts\n\nIn many cases you\u2019ll have to collect these details up manually. But this isn\u2019t necessarily something that that will take a lot of time. If you take note of them as you\u2019re creating the motion comp, chances are most of these details will already be top of  mind. (Also, if you use After Effects for your motion comps, the Inspector Spacetime plugin might be helpful for this task.)\nAnimated prototypes - an interactive deliverable\nMaking prototypes isn\u2019t a new idea for web work by any stretch, but creating prototypes that include animation \u2013 or even creating prototypes specifically to investigate potential animation solutions \u2013 can go a long way towards having higher quality animations in your final product.\nInteractive prototypes are web or app-based, or displayed in a particular tool\u2019s preview window to create a useable version of interactions that might end up in the end product. They\u2019re often made with prototyping apps like Principle, Framer, or coded up in HTML, CSS and JS directly like the example below.\nSee the Pen Prototype example by Val Head (@valhead) on CodePen.\n\nThe biggest different between motion comps and animated prototypes is the interactivity. Prototypes can reposed to taps, drags or gestures, while motion comps can only play back in a linear fashion. Generally speaking, this makes prototypes a bit more of an effort to create, but they can also help you solve different problems. The interactive nature of prototypes can also make them useful for user testing to further evaluate potential solutions. \nWhen to use prototypes\nWhen it comes to testing out animation ideas, animated prototypes can be especially helpful in answering questions like these: \n\nHow will this interaction feel to use? (Interactive animations often have different timing needs than animations that are passively viewed.)\nWhat will the animation be like with real data or real content? \nDoes this animation fit the context of the task at hand? \n\nPrototypes can be used to investigate the same questions that motion comps do if you\u2019re comfortable working in code or your prototyping tool of choice has capabilities to address high fidelity animation details. There are so many different prototyping tools out there at the moment, you\u2019re sure to be able to find one that fits your needs. \nAs a quick side note: If you\u2019re worried that your coding skills might not be up to par to prototype in code, know that prototype code doesn\u2019t have to be production quality code. Animated prototypes\u2019 main concern is working out the animation details. Once you\u2019ve arrived at a combination of animations that works, the animation specifics can be extracted or the prototype can be refactored for production.\nMotion comp or prototype?\nBoth motion comps and prototypes can be extremely useful in the design process and you can use whichever one (or ones) that best fits your team\u2019s style. The key thing that both offer is a way to make animation ideas visible and sharable. When you and your teammate are both looking at the same deliverable, you can be confident you\u2019re talking about the same thing and discuss its pros and cons more easily than just describing the idea verbally. \nMotion comps tend to be more useful earlier in the design process when you want to focus on the motion without worrying about the underlying structure or code yet. Motion comps also be great when you want to try something completely new. Some folks prefer motion comps because the tools for making them feel more familiar to them which means they can work faster. \nPrototypes are most useful for animations that rely heavily on interaction. (Getting the timing right for interactions can be tough without the interaction part sometimes.) Prototypes can also be helpful to investigate and optimize performance if that\u2019s a specific concern.\nGive them a try\nWhichever deliverables you choose to highlight your animation decisions, including them in your design reviews, critiques, or other design discussions will help you make better UI animation choices. More discussion around UI animation ideas during the design phase means greater buy-in, more room for iteration, and higher quality UI animations in your designs. Why not give them a try for your next project?", "year": "2017", "author": "Val Head", "author_slug": "valhead", "published": "2017-12-08T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/stop-leaving-animation-to-the-last-minute/", "topic": "design"}