I'm often amazed by "average" users who seem completely unfazed when they visit sites filled with animated ads and other visual noise; but it likely does negatively affect their understanding of the actual content, since they are being constantly distracted by everything else trying to get their attention. I was a few times forced into this situation and had to physically cover the flashing banners and other crap with my hands in order to actually read the content. Even if it's only in my peripheral vision, I found it to be sufficiently distracting that I couldn't think about the text I was reading --- it was like being half-asleep. I could read each word, but everything felt like a blur.

This brings up my hypothesis that the reason a lot of users seem to not notice things in the UI or read warnings closely is that they're so used to being distracted by useless things and desensitised to it that they've accepted not being able to concentrate and think as being normal, which is quite unsettling. Many times I've had to help someone out with an unfamiliar (to both of us) UI, and the person I was helping would gaze blankly and not be able to find something that I instantly saw.

They are unfazed because it's the norm, not the exception. Humans adapt. It's what we do. They see X and presume that's the way It's supposed to be.

This explains fashion. It even explains obesity. We look around and unless there's clear and obvious danger we conform, because conforming has historically been s survival instinct.

That "survival skill" is coming back to haunt us.

> "This brings up my hypothesis that the reason a lot of users seem to not notice things in the UI or read warnings closely is that they're so used to being distracted by useless things and desensitised to it that they've accepted not being able to concentrate and think as being normal..."

To be clear, I agree.

While it is true that some animations are excessive, I find that a certain amount of animation makes it less taxing to follow what is happening on screen. If big changes happen suddenly and without animation then I have to spend a little bit of extra time to figure out what moved where relative to where it was before and what was added, removed or changed.

Mainly I mean when changes happen automatically, like if something was dynamically added, removed or changed by the system. Not, say, if I initiated a page-down with my keyboard in mutt etc.

We don't have a widely-understood cross-cultural shorthand for annotating an item's 'newness'. By contrast, we are all familiar with objects retaining their identity while they move.

When I minimize my window in macOS, it physically transforms and is sent to its new location. I know where the window I was working on went, and I as a person would have a good reason to be able to somewhat or even mostly comprehend this even if I hadn't ever seen macOS before.

With no animation, the large and prominent window I have been using would immediately disappear with no indication where it went, and the minimized icon in the dock would be highly likely to be overlooked. It would also look almost exactly like "closing" the window, and it would be easy for an inexperienced user to think minimizing a window and closing it are the same thing. I can assure you, this blurred conceptual distinction is not an imaginary problem.

Sure, I don't personally need this animation because I'm an experienced user already. However, in almost all cases it is fundamentally flawed to approach interface design by considering only the needs and preferences of experienced users.

Sure, I don't dispute that for a second. However, we seem to have moved from "UI animation is categorically worse in all cases" to something like "UI animation is categorically worse for moderate-to-experienced users".

Frustration comes not from animation speed (except unreasonably slow), but from animations that freeze the interface. If you buy item and it jumps into a cart; if new item arrives and inserts into a list; if you change pages with < > buttons -- it is okay if it animates, but what is not okay is that you cannot click another button or simply scroll before the end of entire animation or at least slow part of ease-in curve. UI simply has response delays because of these tail timeouts. It feels slower because you cannot train yourself to catch a right moment on ultraslow ends of ease-in -- and so you tap twice to make an action or wait extra. (edit: remember how you quickly tapped on your phone to emulate g-sync with your finger?)

So, when you click buy, item starts jumping into cart, but you can instantly go back or buy/open another item. When you change pages and tap < twice, it just scrolls/rotates/whatever twice as fast. When new items arrive, space for them expands almost instantly, and then "new" animation goes, not interfering with your actions. If new items arrive continuously, debounce on 800-1500ms to prevent animations spoiling the entire interaction. And so on.

You may be interested in this mod: http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/Sfall

I enjoyed playing Fallout 1 and 2 as a child, but I had very low standards back then. I now consider them unplayable without using this mod to speed up the animation.

Animations are (if done right) very useful in games. It's what makes you feel, for example, the difference between a weak damage (HP bar drops slowly) and something to watch out for (the HP bar actually shakes as a chunk is wiped out).

It also helps with immersion.

That use of animation is okay, but to make your product accessible, just make sure that there is a way to turn off the animation. Easing effects and simulation of real physical motion are not needed. Apple's out-of-the-box UIs are unusable to me. My window manager (i3wm) has no animation.

2. Page down doesn't always scroll the same distance when you hit the end of the page, unless you have over-scrolling like some code editors do but websites and browsers don't.

For media naturally represented as pages, like PDF or images, and when one whole page fits on a screen there's a different story though, there it's nice to be able to jump pages instantly without animations, because the page boundary itself can be used as reference. But for reflowing endless wall of text media like web pages and code you kindof need to follow your previous position as a reference.

You are among a tiny minority and come off as trying really hard when insisting that animations are useless. Very few people want a 0ms screen flash on page scroll.

There are many other people in this HN discussion expressing a preference for fast interfaces over animated interfaces.

Nobody in this thread besides you has expressed a desire for a 0ms scroll. Nobody.

JoshMnem: "The proper way to use animation is to NOT use it except when there is absolutely no other way to communicate something." (scrolling is communicated by the fact that you pressed the page-down button)

yorwba: "The first time, the effect would be made very obvious; but with continued use, it becomes so fast that it's instant."

iforgotpassword: "I usually try to disable animation entirely"

th0m4s: "On my last phone I turned the animations off complete"

kqr: "I turn off animations entirely on my phones, and when watching others use their phones I'm always baffled by how slow they feel."

devgutt: "You can also don't use animation at all. I really don't like animations even when used correctly."

+1 for mutt. Text-first is the way to go.

Then out of curiosity I disabled them all on a release and the feedback was pretty much the same except I got a few "it's much faster" responses.

Fwiw internal business application not consumer but lesson learnt.

Personally I very very rarely think animation is an improvement.

Except where you are using animation to cover loading times and at the end of the animation the UI is ready perhaps.

What I've exexperienced is that the team / client falls in love with senseless doodads and whatnots. They lack they empathy to ask:

- "If I saw this for the first time, what would I think?" as well as

- "If I had too keep seeing this - knowing it's not helping me - what would I think?"

The user needs is a distant third to the team's wants and lack of empathy. You'd think after Adobe Flash being abused we would have learned? That doesn't seem to be the case.

> Most animation is visual spam. The proper way to use animation is to NOT use it except when there is absolutely no other way to communicate something.

But they don't back up that claim. They don't come close to backing up such a sweeping statement.

Examples: animations that simulate real physical motion or cause flashes to appear on the page (like Material Design) on sites where users are supposed to read text are nearly always a bad idea from an accessibility perspective. Subtle animation that makes a certain part of a user interface clearer when the user is not reading content is okay if a lot of moderation is used. Don't think "how can I add animation?" -- think "how can I remove animation so that this still works?" Designers should also test the interface and make sure that it still works with animation disabled.