Micro-Interactions: making people love your products
Dan Saffer says it is the way to create “The difference between products we love and products we tolerate”. Some say it is “The way to explain a lot without...
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Dan Saffer says it is the way to create “The difference between products we love and products we tolerate”. Some say it is “The way to explain a lot without...
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Dan Saffer says it is the way to create “The difference between products we love and products we tolerate”. Some say it is “The way to explain a lot without using words”. But I know them as Micro-Interactions. I’m convinced we should pay more attention to micro-interactions in our design, so I hope I can convince you as well.
So what are micro-interactions?
Micro-interactions are tiny interactions we perform continuously during the day. While setting an alarm you already perform 3-5 micro-interactions. Clicking the “add” button, setting the right time, turn snooze off, save the alarm and turn the alarm on. But pressing buttons, adding stuff to your online shopping cart, and removing things from your shopping cart, are examples of micro-interactions as well.
But why should I use them?
You might think, how can this go wrong and why you claim we should pay more attention to it? Well, there are a lot of situations where things go really wrong. Imagine a download button on a random website. You move your mouse to the button, but nothing happens, no hover-state. You click anyway and again nothing happens. You click again and suddenly you get the same file twice into your download folder. Terrible? No. But a correct button would create products we love, instead of just tolerate how bad they are and move on.
“The difference between products we love and products we tolerate”.
How does one create a good micro-interaction?
There are four steps which need careful thinking while creating micro-interactions.
But what about micro-animations?
We now know that micro-interactions are, why we should use them and how to create good ones. But what are micro-animations? Because online those terms get mixed up too often. But it’s rather simple. “A micro-animation is the animation of a micro-interaction”.
Conclusion
Lets all pay more attention to the details in our design. Because the details are what make products great. Are products instantly great after applying this information? No. Because great products need a lot more obviously. But thinking carefully about the micro-interactions and other details in the design is a great start, towards product people will love.
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