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A comment on Material UI. Parent comment

Re:Material UI by robmccoll on Monday November 10, 2014 @07:19AM (#8583121)
Relying on animation to provide depth and perspective may not be a great idea. Subtle static cues remain a constant reminder on the display even if you aren't focused entirely on the application. Animation is much more heavy handed and isn't always there. If the user misses the transition animation, how do they know how to interact with the resulting static page? Animation also has the potential to slow down users as they become accustomed enough to the interface to know which elements they want to interact with before the animation completes.
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Re:Material UI by lloeki on Monday November 10, 2014 @08:08AM (#8583286)
> Subtle static cues

Such as... shadows? which help in feeling depth statically, which is what Material Design is about. What I feel is that MD is young and has rough edges but rests on solid principles.

> Animation also has the potential to slow down users as they become accustomed enough to the interface to know which elements they want to interact with before the animation completes.

Interestingly consistent animation time can have a bonus effect, as a "slow" loading element and a "fast" loading element are paced, creating a temporal rhythm in interface action for those accustomed to the UI, instead of a randomised, off-beat staccato. You don't just know "where" this button will land, you also know "when" and you can get there without visually polling and parsing the screen for availability.

This is all a game of balancing opposites. I totally loathe brutal reflows and interface pop-in (to the point I disabled Chrome's new tab page[0]) because it just triggers an interrupt->parse->interact cycle whether or not I know where to go.

[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page...

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Re:Material UI by ThomPete on Monday November 10, 2014 @07:26AM (#8583150)
You have to take a longer perspective on this think about where information is going, think about vectors rather than bitmap, think about non-interaction rather than interaction, think about the complexity of the apps of the future and you will realize that animation might not be such a bad idea. With skeumorphic design you only have the illusion of access to the elements with a flatter design you can programmatically access them and change them which will open up for interesting new visualization opportunities.

With regards to be being heavy handed both apple and google are well aware of that which explains their support for this new way of approach GUI design.

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Re:Material UI by currysausage on Monday November 10, 2014 @08:31AM (#8583361)
> Animation also has the potential to slow down users as they become accustomed enough to the interface to know which elements they want to interact with before the animation completes.

Happens to me so often. When turning off all animations in Windows, the system feels so much more responsive and doesn't hold me back in well-trained workflows.

With Android 4, the default state is really bad. Fortunately, you can turn off most animations in the dev settings, but still, it feels like the OS wasn't optimized for low latency (especially when switching apps). I hope that Android 5 will still allow for animations to be turned off. I can't say that I'm very eager to try Android 5.

Worst thing is, even with the reasonably powerful Nexus 4 (and I hear the same is true even about the Nexus 9), under a little bit of load, animations tend to become even more sluggish; inaccurate animations let the user make mistakes. I have noticed that it is nearly impossible for me to quickly check something using the Nexus 4 while waiting at the lights, especially if it involves switching apps (go from navigation to messaging etc. and back), the phone just isn't responsive enough. This isn't entirely the fault of animations, but it's one more symptom of a lack of focus on low latency.

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Re:Material UI by ThomPete on Monday November 10, 2014 @09:17AM (#8583573)
This is a well known design flaw in Windows. Apple on the other hand goes to great length to keep the illusion alive. They would rather de-priortize non-visual tasks if it means providing more power to finish ex. some animation.

Animation is a science in it's own and even small unobtrusive cues can mean a world of difference.

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