Animations, Interactions, Transitions

Transitional Interfaces:

It seems crazy to me that more people don’t think about interfaces with respect to the dimension of time. Motion can provide so much information! Maybe the tools to create prototypes are too complicated for most designers?

This is something I always speak about: an interface without motion is nothing. There is no context, no link between different objects.

Windows Phone did a great job to this regard. For example, if you tap a tile on the homescreen, the rest of them move outside the screen before the one you pushed. The system has clearly been created around that, to respond to inputs and act on them.

Motion is clearly a thing that designers tend to forget. Even if an interface is beautiful, it will look dull if nothing reacts to you. The "flat" design movement will exacerbate this. iOS 7 has made depth and context keys citizens of its new UX paradigm.

Tools to simplify this process are now crucial.