You find out what motion is for by removing it

The fastest way to find out what a transition was doing is to delete it. Not shorten it, not soften it. Remove it, ship the build to yourself, and use the product for a day. Most of the time nothing happens, which is the answer. Occasionally something small goes wrong that you cannot immediately name, and that is the transition that was working.

I started doing this because I could not defend most of the motion I had drawn. I could say it felt right. I could not say what it was for.

Motion answers two questions, and only two

A static screen tells you what is true now. It cannot tell you what just happened or where that went. Those are the two questions motion exists to answer, and almost every transition worth keeping answers one of them.

A panel that slides from the edge it will return to is answering the second. A row that lifts as its neighbour is deleted is answering the first. A button that grows on hover answers neither, which is not a reason to remove it, but it is a reason to stop calling it communication.

Every transition is a sentence. Most of the ones I have drawn were clearing their throat.

Duration is a budget, not a taste

The change that mattered most in how I work was small. I stopped asking how long a transition should feel and started asking how long a reader needs to follow it. Those are different questions and only the second has an answer you can defend in a review.

The change that mattered most in how I work was small. I stopped asking how long a transition should feel and started asking how long a reader needs to follow it. Those are different questions and only the second has an answer you can defend in a review.

On a consumer product the evidence arrives without being asked for. People describe confusion in their own words, in public, at volume, and they almost never describe it as a motion problem. They say they could not find the thing, or that it did not save, or that the app went back on its own. Some of that is navigation. Some of it is a missing answer to where did that go..... None of this makes motion decoration. It makes it expensive, which is a better frame. A transition costs a reader time whether or not it earns it, and the only way to find out which it is doing is to take it away and watch.

None of this makes motion decoration. It makes it expensive, which is a better frame. A transition costs a reader time whether or not it earns it, and the only way to find out which it is doing is to take it away and watch.

What removing it actually tells you