Sunday, April 30, 2017

The Biggest Digital Marketing Trends That You Should Know

Last year, digital marketing was shaped by massive changes in social media, the rise in the popularity of live video streaming, and advancements in predictive analytics just to name a few examples. But as you probably already know, the landscape of digital marketing is changing at a fast pace. What...

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by Web Desk via Digital Information World

Un Monde

Experiment around Albert Kahn Foundation's collection of photographs, shot all around the world, between 1900 and 1940, available in Opendata.
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day

Saturday, April 29, 2017

funplex, Inc

Funplex, Inc is a professional operation team of social games in Japan. A corporate message, “CHANGE THE GAME”, is expressed by animation on top and recruit pages in opposite ways.


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Denis Rojcyk Portfolio

Denis Rojcyk is a product designer based in Prague, Czech Republic.


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Go Eat Bomb

In this game you can eat kittens, pick up mushrooms and ride a bottle of vodka!


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GatherContent

GatherContent is an online platform for teams that helps you easily organise and produce content for website projects. You’ll no longer need to manage content through email, spreadsheets and messy documents. Everything you produce in GatherContent i


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Oswald Schilling

Oswald Schilling lived at the turn of 19 th and 20 th centuries. But for us his story neither begins no ends. It’s a journey. A travel by train through admirable, tempting and sometimes dangerous Galicia.


by csreladm via CSSREEL | CSS Website Awards | World best websites | website design awards | CSS Gallery

Upgrading Sylius the TDD Way: Exploring Behat

Last time, we developed some new features on top of Sylius' core to indicate which products and their variants are low on stock and need replenishing. Now, we move on to seeing our changes in the UI, which means we will need to do a bit of StoryBDD testing.

When browsing the list of products, we want to see a new column called Inventory which will hold a sum of all available tracked variants' stock amounts.


Sylius logo

Writing StoryBDD tests

Behat is the tool we want to use here. After making sure Behat is working well by running any feature from the Sylius package, we create a new features/product/managing_products/browsing_products_with_inventory.feature file with the following definition:

@managing_inventory
Feature: Browsing products with inventory
    In order to manage my shop merchandise
    As an Administrator
    I want to be able to browse products

    Background:
        Given the store operates on a single channel in "United States"
        And the store has a product "Kubus"
        And it comes in the following variations:
            | name          | price     |
            | Kubus Banana  | $2.00     |
            | Kubus Carrot  | $2.00     |
        And there are 3 units of "Kubus Banana" variant of product "Kubus" available in the inventory
        And there are 5 units of "Kubus Carrot" variant of product "Kubus" available in the inventory
        And I am logged in as an administrator

    @ui
    Scenario: Browsing defined products with inventory
        Given the "Kubus Banana" product variant is tracked by the inventory
        And the "Kubus Carrot" product variant is tracked by the inventory
        When I want to browse products
        Then I should see that the product "Kubus" has 8 on hand quantity

Again, we describe the make-up of our test product, stating the name, price and available stock of the two variants. If we run this feature, we see a list of paths for available contexts. We aren't interested in any of them, but we also get a hint, so we select None.

php bin/behat features/product/managing_products/browsing_products_with_inventory.feature

--- Use --snippets-for CLI option to generate snippets for following ui_managing_inventory suite steps:

    When I want to browse products
    Then I should see that the product "Kubus" has 18 on hand quantity

We create our context in src/Sylius/Behat/Context/Ui/Admin/ManagingProductsInventoryContext.php and add this:

<?php

// src/Sylius/Behat/Context/Ui/Admin/ManagingProductsInventoryContext.php

namespace Sylius\Behat\Context\Ui\Admin;

use Behat\Behat\Context\Context;

class ManagingProductsInventoryContext implements Context
{
}

Running the feature again doesn't seem to help as we get the same list of contexts as before. That's because Sylius doesn't know anything about our class. We need to configure a service for our context together with what Sylius has in src/Sylius/Behat/Resources/config/services/contexts/ui.xml. We now search for managing_products and add this below it:

<service id="sylius.behat.context.ui.admin.managing_products_inventory" class="Sylius\Behat\Context\Ui\Admin\ManagingProductsInventoryContext">
    <argument type="service" id="sylius.behat.page.admin.product.index" />
    <tag name="fob.context_service" />
</service>

Let's add our sylius.behat.context.ui.admin.managing_products_inventory service (that's the id in ui.xml) to the context services for ui_managing_inventory suites in src/Sylius/Behat/Resources/config/suites/ui/inventory/managing_inventory.yml.

We may need to clear the cache. If we run the feature, we now get an option to select Sylius\Behat\Context\Ui\Admin\ManagingProductsInventoryContext. We then get:

--- Sylius\Behat\Context\Ui\Admin\ManagingProductsInventoryContext has missing steps. Define them with these snippets:

    /**
     * @When I want to browse products
     */
    public function iWantToBrowseProducts()
    {
        throw new PendingException();
    }

    /**
     * @Then I should see that the product :arg1 has :arg2 on hand quantity
     */
    public function iShouldSeeThatTheProductHasOnHandQuantity($arg1, $arg2)
    {
        throw new PendingException();
    }

We can just copy and paste the snippets into the context class we created. Out of curiosity we may import PendingException just to see the output. Let's add use Behat\Behat\Tester\Exception\PendingException; to the top of the class and re-run the feature.

We get an error:

An exception occured in driver: SQLSTATE[HY000] [1049] Unknown database 'xxxx_test' (Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\ConnectionException)

That's because we haven't created the test database. These two commands will do that for us now.

Continue reading %Upgrading Sylius the TDD Way: Exploring Behat%


by Bruno Skvorc via SitePoint

New LinkedIn Remarketing Capabilities: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week LinkedIn Rolls Out Matched Audiences: LinkedIn introduced Matched Audiences, “a set of targeting capabilities that give you the [...]

This post New LinkedIn Remarketing Capabilities: This Week in Social Media first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle


by Grace Duffy via

Friday, April 28, 2017

Nahel Moussi - Portfolio

Portfolio of Nahel Moussi - French Interactive & motion designer
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day

100+ Facts and Stats About Instagram to be Aware of in 2017 (infographic)

Back in the year 2010, Instagram started as a photo-sharing app and crashed a lot but today it is helping businesses drive their growth and revenues. You must be wondering what has changed? The developers have continuously sought to nurture their app for people. Their addition of stories to...

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by Guest Author via Digital Information World

Goodbye Java Channel

As you can tell from the title, I’m writing to say goodbye – to you as well as to the Java channel. It is going on hiatus and this is the last newsletter that goes out. It was a great honor to be your editor! It gave me so many opportunities to interact with interesting […]

Continue reading %Goodbye Java Channel%


by Nicolai Parlog via SitePoint

Upgrading Sylius the TDD Way: Exploring PhpSpec

The post on developing and testing new Sylius features was an introduction to the three types of tests that are used in Sylius - PHPUnit, Phpspec and Behat.

In this part, we'll extend some core classes to indicate color-coded inventory status. First, we'll deal with the back end part. In a followup post, we'll use Behat and test the visual changes. Please follow the instructions in the previous post to get a working instance up and running.


Sylius logo

Sylius has an excellent inventory management solution. However, there's always some room for a tweak or two. If you look at the list of products (admin/products) there's no information about available stock. Looking at the variants of a product, we see inventory data, whether it's tracked or not, and the number of total items in stock, if tracked. It would be nice to see that kind of information on the product listing page, too. In addition, the stock level is all or nothing - for example, a green label says "10 Available on hand" or red "0 Available on hand". How about something in-between, say a yellow label for "3 Available on hand" to indicate that stock is low? Then, the store admin can decide it's time to replenish.

Extend ProductVariant and Product models

We want to extend the behavior of both the ProductVariant and Product models provided by Sylius, so we can see extra information on stock availability when viewing products.

Create a Bundle

First, we create the src/AppBundle/AppBundle.php file and register it in app/AppKernel.php.

<?php

// src/AppBundle/AppBundle.php

namespace AppBundle;

use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Bundle\Bundle;

class AppBundle extends Bundle
{
}

<?php

// app/AppKernel.php

public function registerBundles()
{
    $bundles = [
        // ...
        new AppBundle\AppBundle(),
    ];
}

Next, we inform the autoloader about the new bundle by adding it to the "autoload" section of composer.json.

Continue reading %Upgrading Sylius the TDD Way: Exploring PhpSpec%


by Deji Akala via SitePoint

#332: TypeScript 2.3 Released

This week's JavaScript newsRead this e-mail on the Web
JavaScript Weekly
Issue 332 — April 28, 2017
Redux is a popular library for managing state within JS apps, often used with React. This very thorough walkthrough covers how you’d build something similar.
Justin Deal

The JS superset includes a new comment-based type checking option, as well as support for async generators and iterators.
Microsoft

A frequently updated table of the proposals for future JS features along with their progress.
TC39

Bugsnag
Efficiently identify & resolve JavaScript errors affecting your users. Get alerted in real-time alongside detailed diagnostics, including stacktraces, plus support for sourcemaps. For a limited time, get a free t-shirt when you sign up & try Bugsnag.
Bugsnag   Sponsor

The first version with the new Ignition+Turbofan engines enabled by default, resulting in lower memory usage and faster speedup times. Will be used by Chrome 59 and Node 8.x.
Michael Hablich

A talk by Chris Heilmann of the Edge team covering the perennial topic of ‘fatigue’ over all the choices the JS ecosystem offers.
Chris Heilmann

A JS module that conjugates verbs and inflects nouns and adjectives, tell you what words are plurals or not, and more.
Alex Corvi

See how the exact same real world blogging platform is built using React or Angular on top of Node, Rails, and Django. Introductory blog post.
Thinkster

The team behind the V8 JavaScript engine want to know what proposed language features you’d like them to work on next.
Google

Jobs Supported by Hired.com

Can't find the right job? Want companies to apply to you? Try Hired.com.

In Brief

Angular 4.1: A Minor Release with Full TypeScript 2.2/2.3 Support news
Stephen Fluin

Ruby on Rails 5.1 Released, Embraces JavaScript news
The Ruby webapp framework is now a lot more JavaScript friendly.
David Heinemeier Hansson

☁️🥊 Hey Front-End Devs …Master Full Stack with Jem Young! 
Become a Full Stack Engineer and gain the confidence to master the command line and server.
Frontend Masters  Sponsor

How to Publish Packages on npm, A Video Series tutorial
Focuses on doing it the right way, complete with tests and docs.
Trevor Miller

Seven Tips for Handling 'undefined' tutorial
Dmitri Pavlutin

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building A Simple Chess AI tutorial
Lauri Hartikka

The Power of Custom Directives in Vue tutorial
Sarah Drasner

Build a Web Framework In Less Than 20 Lines Of Code tutorial
Everyday there are more new frameworks to learn, but it doesn't have to be that way!
PubNub  Sponsor

Does Glimmer Mean The Death of Ember? opinion
Robert Jackson

Why Is TypeScript Getting So Popular? opinion
Mary Branscombe

Callbacks vs Promises vs 'async/await' in a 7 Second Video video
Wassim Chegham on Twitter

Everything Is A Plugin: Mastering Webpack From The Inside Out video
An energetic, in-depth 100 minute talk/workshop.
Sean Larkin

Quokka: A Live JavaScript Scratchpad for JetBrains' IDEs tools
A month ago, this handy tool only worked with VS Code - now it supports JetBrains’ IDEs too :-)
Artem Govorov

Moon: A Minimal 5KB, Blazing Fast Vue-esque User Interface Library tools
Kabir Shah

p-event: Promisify An Event by Waiting for It to Be Emitted code
Sindre Sorhus

Slate: A Customizable Framework for Building Rich Text Editors code

angular-ssr: An Angular 4+ Server-Side Rendering Solution code
Christopher Bond

SmartPhoto.js: A Responsive Image Viewer, Especially for Mobile code

StrMan 2.0 Released: 66 Handy String Manipulation Functions code
Daniel Leite de Oliveira

Try Codeship Basic: simple hosted CI that works out of the box 
Codeship  Sponsor

Curated by Peter Cooper and published by Cooperpress.

Like this? You may also enjoy: FrontEnd Focus : Node Weekly : React Status

Stop getting JavaScript Weekly : Change email address : Read this issue on the Web

© Cooperpress Ltd. Office 30, Lincoln Way, Louth, LN11 0LS, UK


by via JavaScript Weekly

Introducing SpriteKit

A Quick Guide to Dependency Management With Bower

Using the Twitter API to Tweet Repetitive Content

Snazzy Info Window – Customizable Info Windows using Google Maps API

Snazzy Info Window is a plugin for customizable info windows using the Google Maps JavaScript API. Open sourced by the people that created Snazzy Maps.


by via jQuery-Plugins.net RSS Feed

Konterball

Minigame for googles webVR technology based on the mechanics of ping pong. Play against your friend or against the wall.
by via Awwwards - Sites of the day

Facebook Marketing: Why It Is Time to Rethink Everything

Do you use Facebook to market your business? Wondering how marketing on Facebook is evolving? To explore how marketers should adjust to Facebook’s recent and future changes, I interview Mari Smith. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle


by Michael Stelzner via

Heather Vandervecht

Heather Vandervecht

Phenomenal One Page portfolio encapsulated in a vintage operating system interface (similar to Windows 95) for front-end developer, Heather Vandervecht. There is so much to love.. from the interactive chat console (with a lovely personal tone), the work/contact pop-up windows that are draggable, closable and even minimize to a taskbar, the responsive adaption to only a chat window on mobile and what a final touch with the shut-down button blackening the screen leaving only a wave emoji 👋🏻 Bravo.

by Rob Hope via One Page Love

Zapio Technologies

Zapio Technologies

Clean One Pager with trendy drop shadows for IoT and AI platform, Zapio Technologies. The 3-step platform animation is very impression.

by Rob Hope via One Page Love

Thursday, April 27, 2017

KRM-WEB The Digital Team

We are not another web agency … We are a team of professional web designers and web developers based in paris, involved in the web community.


by csreladm via CSSREEL | CSS Website Awards | World best websites | website design awards | CSS Gallery

Fizz Portfolio Theme

Premium Portfolio WordPress Theme


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Effectlab

Κατασκευή Ιστοσελίδων, Ηράκλειο, Κρήτης.


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Why You are Not Getting Traction on Social Media? 12 Reasons to Consider

What is the most daunting challenge for any business today? It is the challenge of being discovered and being talked about. Until people talk about you and pay you enough attention they are not going to buy your products or services. So, the first challenge is about making your presence felt....

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by Guest Author via Digital Information World

Transcript: Ask the UXperts: Meaningful Animation – Getting it Right — with Val Head

Animation is a word that used to make me shudder.

I’m from a generation of devs that grew up in the era of Flash splash screens. Say no more.

But Val Head has changed all that for me.

She has successfully demonstrated that if you are smart about how and when you use animation in your work, the results can be spectacular. Take Stripe’s checkout experience for example. It uses animation to guide you through a process, reducing cognitive load and adding delight. And that is just one of the great examples we chatted about.

If you’ve always been a skeptic, read through Val’s transcript. You won’t be disappointed.

If you didn’t make the session because you didn’t know about it, make sure you join our community to get updates of upcoming sessions.

If you’re interested in seeing what we discussed, or you want to revisit your own questions, here is a full transcript of the chat.

Transcript

hawk
2017-04-26 22:02
First up I want to say a huge thank you to @valhead for her time today. She doesn’t know me from a grain of salt, but I cold emailed her and here she is.
hawk
2017-04-26 22:02
Legendary and much appreciated.
hawk
2017-04-26 22:02
For those of you that haven’t been to one of these sessions before – they’re very simple. I intro Val, she intros the topic, and you get to ask questions.
hawk
2017-04-26 22:03
If it gets crazy busy, I’ll acknowledge your questions like this
hawk
2017-04-26 22:03
:grey_question:
hawk
2017-04-26 22:03
And queue them behind the scenes to Val to answer in order
majabrugos
2017-04-26 22:03
has joined #ask-the-uxperts
tatianap
2017-04-26 22:03
has joined #ask-the-uxperts
hawk
2017-04-26 22:03
Full transcript up on http://uxmastery.com tomorrow (my time)
hawk
2017-04-26 22:03
So, the formal intro:
hawk
2017-04-26 22:04
@valhead is a web animation expert and author with a talent for getting designers and developers alike excited about the power of animation. She is the author of Designing Interface Animation on Rosenfeld Media and teaches CSS Animation on http://lynda.com.
hawk
2017-04-26 22:04
hawk
2017-04-26 22:04
She curates the UI Animation Newsletter, co-hosts the Motion and Meaning podcast, and leads web animation workshops at companies and conferences around the world.
hawk
2017-04-26 22:04
hawk
2017-04-26 22:04
hawk
2017-04-26 22:05
And she’s here today to talk to us about animation and how we can use it successfully in our work
hawk
2017-04-26 22:05
@valhead The mic is yours. Can you give us an intro to the topic please?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:06
Thanks @hawk! (And thanks for inviting me to do this session)
valhead
2017-04-26 22:06
Hello everyone! I’m really glad you joined us to talk UI animation today.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:06
It’s awesome to see so many people here from so many places!
valhead
2017-04-26 22:07
Our topic tonight is UI animation for the web. And I’ve found that it’s some people are hesitant to use in their work.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:07
Sometimes because they feel they don’t know it well enough.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:08
But often times I think it’s more not being sure how to use it.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:09
And, of course, there’s also some folks who are totally against web animation at all because they only associate it with things like skip intros or banner ads and such.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:09
but animation on the web does not have to be those things if you don’t want it to.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:09
(I’ve most definitely seen Flash-like skip intros made with CSS, and maybe you have to, but there’s so much more animation can do on the web.)
valhead
2017-04-26 22:11
For example, Stripe’s Checkout uses animation in nearly every interaction in the checkout process. http://ift.tt/1f8E1en But buying something with that services doesn’t feel over done or flashy
valhead
2017-04-26 22:11
(You can use the “donate to watsi” button on their site to see it in action for yourself)
valhead
2017-04-26 22:11
And sites likes http://ift.tt/2nKbNTc use animation to bring the artist’s work to life.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:12
Both of those examples provide top-notch experiences, and neither would be the same without the animation because it’s truly part of the design.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:13
Every animation in Checkout is there for a reason. They’re there to help you, the person using it, to buy a thing.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:13
The key to great UI animation is that combination of purpose and style.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:14
There are a number of ways animation can add to UX in ways that some of our other design tools may not be quite as good at
valhead
2017-04-26 22:15
Maintaining spacial orientation is one thing animation can be a big help with.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:16
Often times, parts of an interface or some functionality needs to live off screen or out of view, or even behind other elements. We can use animation to help users get a sense of the space and layering of an interface even when they can’t see eveything
valhead
2017-04-26 22:17
Cotton Bureau uses animations to reveal the steps of their checkout process, and to reveal their navigation even though both are offscreen initially http://ift.tt/2g8Zmk1
valhead
2017-04-26 22:18
the nav slides on from the left and the checkout flow continues on to the right of what’s visible on screen. The animations that transition each in and out of view show users where those things “live”.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:18
This helps to reduce the cognitive load for the users by showing them this relationship visually instead of them having to keep track in their heads.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:19
Animation can also be a huge help for giving feedback for two reasons
valhead
2017-04-26 22:19
First because motion tends to draw our eye, and as designers we can use motion to direct users’ attention to where an important thing is happening. Or, even where a mistake has been made.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:20
That aspect can be really helpful for avoiding change blindness too.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:20
Second because animation can help us display multiple kinds of feedback in a small space.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:21
Stripe’s donate or pay button is a good example of this. The loading time and success state confirmation are all taken care of by that button thanks to the animation they use.
glennveugen
2017-04-26 22:21
Q: “motion tends to draw attention to our eye”. Does this lose its effect over time? Should we maybe distinguish between animations for first time use, and repeat use, where animation might lose its effectiveness?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:22
The third useful thing animation can help with that I want to mention tonight is animation’s affect on perceived performance.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:23
By using animation during times of un-avoidable waits (loading, saving, etc) animation can help make it seem like those wait times are shorter by focusing users on the progress instead of the wait. Or by building trust with a well designed (not generic) loader.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:24
Shopify has a great progress focused loader when you create a new account. It lists a series of steps over time like “1. Preparing your store” “2. starting your theme” as your wait for your new account to be made.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:24
Those steps certainly aren’t happening as they’re listed, but they keep you focused on the progress, not the wait.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:25
Viget did a really interesting study a while back on loaders, seeing what kind of animation people would wait for the longest. Their conclusion was that people would wait longer for more detailed and designed loading animations, but got frustrated sooner with generic loaders. Really interesting!
valhead
2017-04-26 22:25
valhead
2017-04-26 22:26
@glennveugen I’m not sure it loses effectiveness over time as much as it could become annoying if you use large amounts of animation for a very repetitive task.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:27
For example, banner ads were animated to get our attention. And i’m not sure that ever stopped working so much as we all got so annoyed with it we learned to ignore the whole section of where banners typically were or blocked them entirely.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:28
So, I would say that grand animations for bringing something on to the screen, or transitioning between views could get old fast if used more than just on the first time around.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:28
But things like shaking the form field that has an error, or a pulsing tool-tip probably wouldn’t suffer from that same effct.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:29
Context matters too, of course. So it would vary from case to case.
hawk
2017-04-26 22:29
Ready for questions @valhead ?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:29
Yes! let’s do some questions :slightly_smiling_face:
hawk
2017-04-26 22:30
Hit Val with your questions!
glennveugen
2017-04-26 22:30
when is a good time in the design process to start taking animation into account, and what is a good approach to it?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:30
Ah, that’s a good question for sure
glennveugen
2017-04-26 22:31
animation is usually the first aspect that’s being sacrificed, unfortunately :slightly_smiling_face:
valhead
2017-04-26 22:31
As early in the design process as possible, really. Right from the beginning. The earlier you start thinking about where animation could be useful in specific tasks or user flows, the better chance you’ll come up with something good.
stuartmurray
2017-04-26 22:31
as far as accessibility is concerned, what would be some good fundamentals to keep in mind when including animation in design?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:31
And the better chance that your entire team will see its value.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:32
@glennveugen For better or worse, I think the main reason animation is the first thing to be sacrificed is that we allow it to be seen as just “extra” or “decoration”.
mynameischad
2017-04-26 22:33
Do you / how do you use storyboarding a lot to work out interactions and CTA animations?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:33
But if we treat it as a true design tool, it becomes part of the whole design effort.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:33
So, to avoid animation being seen as just an “extra” we need to include in it our design discussion and process early on and be able to articulate its value. Just like we would for other design tools like type and colour and such.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:35
@stuartmurray Definitely. Accessibility concerns can be a bit different with animation
glennveugen
2017-04-26 22:35
And how to convey design specs to developers? Type and colour are rather simple, also in terms of CSS setup? How is this with animations? There are lots of aspects that come into play when dealing with animation: duration, easing, … Any tips or tools to make design specs for animation?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:36
There’s the basic stuff in the WACG like not flashing the screen and including pause/play controls and such
valhead
2017-04-26 22:36
But since that was written for a slightly different era of web design, we need to connect some of the dots ourselves
mynameischad
2017-04-26 22:36
Not flashing is, I’m assuming, to avoid epileptic shock?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:37
For example, rotating carousels and such are long playing animations really, and they should have some kind of pause/play controls
valhead
2017-04-26 22:37
Not moving the actionable items is another thing to keep in mind
valhead
2017-04-26 22:37
And that sounds like something that’s easy to avoid. Like, who would want to move a button someone is trying to click on, right?
stuartmurray
2017-04-26 22:38
yes that’s a pet hate actually, I think I’ve used sites or apps that moved the buttons I was trying to tap or click on
valhead
2017-04-26 22:38
But I’ve seen more than one slideshow/carousel of content out there that is on an auto timer with no way to pause it and the button fades away before someone can click on it if they have any mobility issues at all. (Or even if they were just like, distracted for a second)
valhead
2017-04-26 22:39
Triggering issues with motion sickness and vestibular disorders is possible with animation. And that’s not something we’ve really had to think about before
valhead
2017-04-26 22:40
I wrote an article on what that means, and how we can avoid triggering people on A List Apart a while back: http://ift.tt/2oRfI1w
valhead
2017-04-26 22:41
Browsers are starting to implement a reduce motion media query to help with that too
valhead
2017-04-26 22:41
mra.kumar
2017-04-26 22:42
What are the tools we can use for creating an Anemation for any application?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:42
@mynameischad I use storyboards often as initial sketches for animation ideas.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:43
I find they can be really helpful for getting groups of people to give input on animations too. Project managers, designers, UX folks…. everyone can draw some simple storyboards to show a possible animated solution.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:43
So they can be really useful for getting a conversation going around animation and where it could possibly be useful.
mynameischad
2017-04-26 22:43
When I do it, I tend to treat them like keyframes (using arrows and such to denote motion)
mynameischad
2017-04-26 22:44
Are there techniques that you tend to fall back on?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:44
When it comes to actually evaluating if an animated CTA is effective though, I think interactive prototypes can be more hepful. It can be difficult to really judge things like that without testing out how they feel to interact with.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:44
But starting with storyboards to narrow down the possible approaches or ideas can be really useful before jumping into a prototype too.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:46
@mynameischad Yep, drawing out the key aspects of the motion in boxes, or frames, is pretty much how I use them. I really like Eva Lotta-Lamm’s approach for sketching animated interactions.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:46
She doesn’t call them storyboards by name, but her approach works great for storyboards.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:47
Her advice is to sketch out the trigger of the interaction, the action that will be animated and then write out some description of the quality, or how the animation should look/feel
valhead
2017-04-26 22:47
I thought her approach was so useful I interviewed her about it for the UI Animation Newsletter: http://ift.tt/2hmzuyV
mynameischad
2017-04-26 22:48
YES! Awesome
valhead
2017-04-26 22:48
(She’s the best at sketching interface things!)
valhead
2017-04-26 22:48
@glennveugen conveying animation design decisions to developers doesn’t have a really great solution yet
valhead
2017-04-26 22:48
I know that at least a couple of the prototyping tools are working on better ways to do this
valhead
2017-04-26 22:49
because it’s so essential
valhead
2017-04-26 22:49
my advice is to give developers some visual representation of the animation. Either a motion mock up (video of how it should work/look essentially) or even a basic prototype.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:50
Then also provide them with duration and delay values for the animations, details of the easing used (the cubic-bezier curve or spring values, or however else they’re expressed) along with any repeat values or iteration counts
valhead
2017-04-26 22:51
I know some larger teams have developed their own internal tools for pulling the data devs need out of After Effects-made motion comps. But even just writing it out by hand will be helpful.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:52
And if you’ve just been working out all the details of a particular animated interaction, you can probably rattle most of that stuff off right off your head. So it’s best to write that all down right after working on the design side of the animation. Much easier that way :slightly_smiling_face:
valhead
2017-04-26 22:53
@mra.kumar Sorry, I’m not sure I understand your question. Are you looking for a tool that exports animation for all possible platforms?
mra.kumar
2017-04-26 22:54
Yes for Android and other devices
hawk
2017-04-26 22:55
We have time for one more question after this. Anyone got one?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:55
@mra.kumar Depending on what kind of animations you’re looking to create a tool like Airbnb’s Lottie might do the trick.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:55
valhead
2017-04-26 22:56
It uses the bodymovin’ library to export animations from an After Effect composition to android, iOS or React Native compatible files
vedanthk
2017-04-26 22:56
Are there certain parameters to look out for when we picture adding UI animations?
valhead
2017-04-26 22:56
Bodymoinv’ itself can be used to translate After Effects compositions to SVG or canvas for the web as well http://ift.tt/1FnHQJv
mra.kumar
2017-04-26 22:56
@Valhead Thanks
valhead
2017-04-26 22:57
Those tend to work best for animations that aren’t dependent on interaction though
valhead
2017-04-26 22:58
@vedanthk It’s hard to make over-arching rules that can apply to every variety of UI animation out there, but I think if there’s one thing to keep in mind across the board, it’s context.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:59
Or maybe more specifically, how well the animation fits with the current context.
valhead
2017-04-26 22:59
A good fit with the context is what makes animations feel right or work well.
valhead
2017-04-26 23:01
The same animations that are great in a game’s UI, for example, may not be great for a corporate web site, no matter how well those animations were designed.
valhead
2017-04-26 23:01
In the same way, an animation that’s perfect for calling attention to an error, may not work at if it’s used on every button in a navigation bar.
valhead
2017-04-26 23:02
The purpose of the animation has to fit the context it’s in for it to feel right, essentially.
valhead
2017-04-26 23:03
If the context and the animation gel, it makes for a great experience. So much so that the animations almost become invisible because they’re just part of the experience and the overall design.
hawk
2017-04-26 23:04
And we’re about out of time!
mra.kumar
2017-04-26 23:04
What type of sound effect we can use in Anemation
Music
Or interactive voice
mynameischad
2017-04-26 23:04
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!
hawk
2017-04-26 23:04
Thanks so much for your time today @valhead – super insightful session
valhead
2017-04-26 23:04
@mynameischad you’re welcome :slightly_smiling_face:
hawk
2017-04-26 23:05
You rocked it!

The post Transcript: Ask the UXperts: Meaningful Animation – Getting it Right — with Val Head appeared first on UX Mastery.


by Sarah Hawk via UX Mastery