As the world becomes more focused on experience and customer satisfaction, we’ve seen a significant shift in the way that developers create websites and applications for almost all industries. For instance, alongside a shift towards more user experienced focused design, we’ve also seen more popularity around the concept of Motion UI – one of the biggest digital design trends for 2018.

Motion UI does exactly what you would expect when it comes to user experience. It allows developers to make their website more intuitive by drawing the customer into website engagement with movement and animation. The good news is that adopting motion UI solutions might not be as complex as they seem. Here, we’re going to give you a quick introduction to motion UI, and what it means to your development strategy.

How Does Motion UI Work?

Essentially, Motion UI is a stand-alone SASS library designed to help developers create custom UI animations and CSS transitions. The Motion UI library on Github includes dozens of transition and animation classes to choose from, which makes it easier for developers to prototype their designs.

Though the library is relatively new to the web design world, it’s packed full of opportunities for those who want to enhance and improve digital experiences. The library was created by one “ZURB” one of the leading design companies for web UI. In October 2017, the brand redesigned their Motion UI library and made it open-source, so people could add contributions to the mix as and when they saw fit.

The most recent and updated version of the Motion UI library consists of a CSS file, complete with all the rules for next-level transitions. There is plenty of motion.JS files and Sass files to help you power your own motion effects and all you need is a basic knowledge of some of the most common digital languages to get started.

What Makes Motion UI So Appealing?

Though Motion UI is still evolving, many front-end developers are already very excited about what it could mean to the future of web application development. Motion UI helps developers to get going quickly when you want to create engaging experiences for users. The library is full of pre-made CSS classes which means that you can apply them to UX elements as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

The Motion UI library is also incredibly flexible, and you can add SaaS mix-ins to control the values of each animated effect, from its direction to its intensity and speed. If that wasn’t enough, the Motion UI library is now completely accessible, whereas it was originally designed to work exclusively with the ZURB foundation frameworks. After the system went open-source, it was able to adapt to work with several animation libraries, including React JS and Angular.

Ultimately, Motion UI design really takes the website or application experience for your users up a notch, simplifying the process of designing expressive interfaces and giving users insights into your visual hierarchy in the web design world. Because ZURB powers it, you can also rest assured that Motion UI has been thoroughly tested to ensure the highest level of performance. With motion UI, you can draw more attention to critical elements in your app and website design.

How To Apply Motion UI to Your Projects

The flexibility, simplicity and interesting nature of Motion UI make it a must-have tool for many UI developers. If you already know the basics of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, then you shouldn’t have much trouble mastering the possibilities of motion UI to provide exciting and memorable experiences to users. In fact, with this system, you can animate everything from 3D objects to illustrations and shapes.

If you’re still wondering how you would use Motion UI in your own projects, here are a few ideas:

• Use your motion UI to welcome users onto a page and capture their attention. The right setup could help to reduce bounce rates and keep visitors on your website or application pages for longer. Make sure that your animations load quickly, however, or you could lose your user’s attention.
• Animate the scroll: Although it might not be the most exciting animation effect around, an animated scroll can help to make your scroll feel more natural and engaging.
• Power micro interactions: With your Motion UI system, you can power everything from animated toggles, switches, and buttons to simplify and enhance the customer journey.
• Decrease bounce rate: By helping customers to have more fun on your website, you can keep them around for longer and maintain their attention.