Got any research to back up that claim? I always go to the developer settings and turn off all animations on my Android phones, and it makes a monumental difference in usability, exclusively for the better. I did it on my moms phone as well, and she instantly felt it got faster, so this is not just because I am a technical person.
Some UI designers think animations are good, but they are not. They are a clutch that designers who don't know how to design good UIs rely on to indicate what is going on. We have never had faster computers than we do now, but we are collectively spending thousands of hours a day waiting for pointless animations to finish.
> Some UI designers think animations are good, but they are not
Imho animations are not a problem in cases where they do not affect latency. For example a visual click feedback to tell the user that it was registered & is being processed makes sense, especially for situations where the task may take a while. For example Mac OS' "eject drive" button would benefit from this, it has zero visual click feedback while ejecting the drive can take a whole minute for some reason. Yet at the same time Apple simply refuses to remove the 1 second long workspace switch animation even if blocked in the accessibility settings, they only swap the swiping animation with a fading animation.
The problem is that often designers simply don't put any thought into it other than "make it smooth and look nice".
In cases where the animation affects latency between user input and reaction to it there is no animation speed that's fast enough. It will always feel like wading through a swamp.
Completely agree. And in 99% of cases, an instant indicator is enough and you don't need an animation.
The few places where animation makes sense are places where it is natural. For example, smooth scrolling and scroll acceleration in touch interfaces have to be animated to work, and they actually improve usability by allowing the user to work less.
I think most modern user interfaces are designed to look great for people who aren't actually using them, i.e. in demos and in stores where you pick up a phone to look at. In that case flat UIs with smooth transitions and shadows will, to the naive eye, look way more polished than UIs with proper contrast and no animations. This is also the reason that TVs come with ridiculous default settings for sharpening, contrast and frame interpolation, not because it actually is better, but because it looks better in the store and therefore sells better.
But UIs that you use every day shouldn't look great, they should allow you to get actions done as quickly as you can think of them, and effectively serve as an extension of your thought process.
Feedback affects latency when working fast. Feedback is in the critical path because the user can't look away until they've confirmed they made their input correctly. To do otherwise risks desynchronizing their mental state from the computer's state.
I would always do that on my previous (slower) Android phones, but it's NOT because they added to the usability, just that they slowed down the interaction significantly when the GPU etc. were not capable enough. On my latest Pixel, I don't do that anymore and just enjoy the animations because they don't slow down my daily interactions anymore. So your point does not actually convey that Animations are useless. They just have a toll on performance, yes. They always will. (I work in an industry where we spend a lot of time perfecting 3D geometry animations, because our users prefer it).
Some UI designers think animations are good, but they are not. They are a clutch that designers who don't know how to design good UIs rely on to indicate what is going on. We have never had faster computers than we do now, but we are collectively spending thousands of hours a day waiting for pointless animations to finish.