A Good Animation Disappears
The article argues that the best UI animations are those that go unnoticed by users, serving to guide attention, provide feedback, or smooth transitions without causing distraction. Effective animation should feel natural, purposeful, and disappear into the background of the user experience rather than drawing attention to itself.
Background
- The article is written by the team behind Frigade, a product that helps developers build onboarding flows (tooltips, checklists, progress bars) for their apps. The post reflects their design philosophy.
- It argues that UI animations should be functional, not decorative: they should guide the user's attention, explain a relationship (e.g., an element appearing from a button click), or provide feedback — and then "disappear" (feel natural, not call attention to themselves).
- The title is a play on the famous design aphorism "A good interface is invisible" (often attributed to Mark Weiser or Dieter Rams).
- This sits in a longer design discourse: functional vs. ornamental animation, performance considerations (janky vs. smooth), and the rise of "micro-interactions" in mobile and web UI (pioneered by companies like Apple, Google's Material Design).
- For readers: "easing curves" refer to how an object accelerates/decelerates over time (ease-in, ease-out, bounce), not just how fast it moves.