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My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

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Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#321

Post by usrusr »

James_K wrote: post #186
chefandy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like in this case, what exactly is "going on" that requires this visual delay? Nothing. It's a technical demonstration. The delay is also overemphasized to make the difference more apparent. > The this is the fanciness that detracts from solving the major flaw of these sliders: you can't easily tell whether it's off or on That's because they don't represent anything. Toggles don't always represent on or off, either…

> even "feel" does matter to most users And I think most users would prefer software that does stuff instantly. Attaching little animations to everything is just silly and distracting. It only happens because someone had nothing better to do but still had to look busy. These things almost universally degrade the interface and I've yet to see the actual benefit of them, aside from the fact that they draw attention to…

> A good interface is one you do not notice

A good animation is one you do not notice. Subtlety that succeeds in loading off its feedback payload in your brain without exposing the transmission mechanism to the conscious level of perception.

Chances are you are only complaining about the subset of animations that failed to stay under that threshold. Yes, slow, elaborate animations are bad.

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#322

Post by exe34 »

Biganon wrote: post #301
exe34 wrote: post #112

Have you tried using a tick box?

They don't serve the same purpose. A toggle switch has an immediate result, such as switching the website between light mode and dark mode. A checkbox is part of a form, and indicates a boolean choice that will only be taken into account once you submit the form.

How do you enter text then? Do you re-implement the text box because input text is part of a form?

Check boxes work just fine without a form btw: https://stackoverflow.com/a/50012963

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#323

Post by chefandy »

injidup wrote: post #161
chefandy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like in this case, what exactly is "going on" that requires this visual delay? Nothing. It's a technical demonstration. The delay is also overemphasized to make the difference more apparent. > The this is the fanciness that detracts from solving the major flaw of these sliders: you can't easily tell whether it's off or on That's because they don't represent anything. Toggles don't always represent on or off, either…

Binary toggles are everywhere in web UX. They are almost always used where a simple dropdown menu with WORDS indicating the chosen state would be better. However designers hate that because then they can't write fancy animations on creamy toggle widgets. A dropdown with the words enabled/disabled indicating the state will always be better than a toggle with some subtle animation and colour signalling the state.

Do you have any support for anything you've said that isn't based entirely on your own assumptions and feelings about designers?

> A dropdown with the words enabled/disabled indicating the state will always be better than a toggle with some subtle animation and colour signalling the state.

Oh yeah way better except for not being able to see all of your options or even how many options there are without interacting with it, at least double the number of keystrokes to operate, more cognitive load to parse and operate, not being idiomatic for the interaction, etc. etc. etc. There are lots of uses that dropdowns work better for, but saying they're simply better is asinine.

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#324

Post by cardanome »

chefandy wrote: post #304
cardanome wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similarly, people who spend most of their days doing technical things using technical tools made by and for technical people interpret interfaces differently than most people. Most "non-technical" people use computers, especially desktops, in a professional setting. Navigating those UIs is part of their jobs and they will spent hours upon hours doing so. Pretty animations may make a good first impressions but they…

> Most "non-technical" people use computers, especially desktops, in a professional setting. Navigating those UIs is part of their jobs and they will spent hours upon hours doing so. Yes, but they still reason about those interfaces totally differently. This isn't a quantitative difference in competence, it's a qualitative difference in approach. > Pretty animations may make a good first impressions but they get old…

> I assure you that you don't notice most of the animations you benefit from in your usage.

I assure you, I do notice them. I am disabling them everywhere I can. I disable them in my Desktop Environment, I disable them on my Android smartphone. I am way more productive without them.

Now, I don't hate animations per se. On the contrary as I dabble in game dev I find them crucial to "juice up" a game. They have their place but that is not productivity software that people are forced to use daily. They are for play not work.

> This is a common trope among developers who think their feelings about interface design carry more weight than the research that actually tests these things. It holds about as much weight as any other feelings vs facts argument.

Many open source devs are users of their software. You are making a false dichotomy where developer are some special creatures with totally different needs. I like what I like. There is no such thing as an "average user". People have different needs. Making software for the lowest common denominator will create UI that will be miserable for everyone to use.

Now I am willing to listen to actual academic studies about UI design and productivity but your acting like some corporate internal studies are actually legit science is silly. We all know this things are are more drive by corporate politics.

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#325

Post by chefandy »

aembleton wrote: post #271
injidup wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you don't know if ``on`` mapped to what you think it does. https://i.imgur.com/cflIbUv.png for example. Light grey is disabled. Light blue is enabled. It's not accessible. It's not obvious. It's not great for colour blind people. It's probably in this case a deliberate dark pattern. The only case where a toggle is ok is if the word for the each state is to the left and right of the toggle. https:/…

I agree, for on/off a checkbox would work better

Somtimes. Checkboxes work for "yes" or "no", but they're not idiomatic for other "a" vs "b" selections.

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#326

Post by mzs »

roywiggins wrote: post #297
mrob wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The virtual buttons are controlled by physical buttons. My mouse button already "animates" because it physically moves when I click it (and it's optical, so no contact bounce). I don't need another animation playing after the physical movement finishes. That's just annoying time wasting.

I think the animations are more satisfying on touchscreens, where you don't have a mouse.

They are literally covered by my finger, I can't even see them.

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#327

Post by chefandy »

mrob wrote: post #309
chefandy wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User testing disagrees. Most people find an instantly refreshing screen of text to be quite dazzling. Developers look at screens of text all day long-- they're much more tolerant to those sorts of transitions than most people are, and basing defaults on their usage styles is one of the reason most people find FOSS interfaces completely awful.

Most users only see animated scrolling at work (not genuine "smooth scrolling" tied to continuous touchscreen or touchpad input, which is unobjectionable, but playback of canned animations following completed input events). They have an obvious incentive to like it: they're getting paid for doing nothing.

> They have an obvious incentive to like it: they're getting paid for doing nothing.

Oh good lord: what an incredibly patronizing sentiment. If design makes an interface slower for its users to use, it's a bad design. What developers-- used to looking at entirely text-based interfaces and command lines-- expect in interface feedback is much different from what others expect from it. If it's a tool for which developers are a core group of users, it should communicate using their expected set of visual signals.

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#328

Post by malfist »

roywiggins wrote: post #297
mrob wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The virtual buttons are controlled by physical buttons. My mouse button already "animates" because it physically moves when I click it (and it's optical, so no contact bounce). I don't need another animation playing after the physical movement finishes. That's just annoying time wasting.

I think the animations are more satisfying on touchscreens, where you don't have a mouse.

Are they though? I usually use dev mode on my phone to turn off most animations because I find them needlessly distracting instead of satisfying. If I can't disable it, at least let me speed it up

Re: My favourite animation trick: exponential smoothing (2023)

#330

Post by mrob »

chefandy wrote: post #327
mrob wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most users only see animated scrolling at work (not genuine "smooth scrolling" tied to continuous touchscreen or touchpad input, which is unobjectionable, but playback of canned animations following completed input events). They have an obvious incentive to like it: they're getting paid for doing nothing.

> They have an obvious incentive to like it: they're getting paid for doing nothing. Oh good lord: what an incredibly patronizing sentiment. If design makes an interface slower for its users to use, it's a bad design. What developers-- used to looking at entirely text-based interfaces and command lines-- expect in interface feedback is much different from what others expect from it. If it's a tool for which developer…

It's an major confounding factor in all productivity studies, and IMO underappreciated because UI researchers generally don't want to get involved in politics. Social status depends more on relative wealth than absolute wealth. When the owning class takes approximately 100% of the generated wealth from improvements, the direct effects of improved productivity only hurt the worker. (They gain indirectly, because improved productivity helps society as a whole, but the marginal gain to the worker from any individual improvement is always small, so there's a tragedy of the commons here and the incentive is always to resist improvements.)
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