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Micro Interactions: Take User Experience at New Level

 

What Are Micro Interactions and What Is Their Purpose? 

A well-designed mobile application capitalizes on the ability to create experiences that are positive, personalized, engaging, and valuable. This is done by creating a visually appealing interface and pairing it with a meaningful experience that is emotional, user-friendly, and accessible without instruction. Companies building digital products like mobile applications, it is critical to creating, retaining, and building business momentum. Why? Simply because poor user experience results in your end users feeling a negative emotional connection to your product. Micro interactions are the small moments in user journey that influence users through feedback, rewards, and direction. These elements can take a good digital product and make it exceptional.

Many of us are unaware of the countless micro interactions we come across on a daily basis because these moments are programmed by keeping social engineering in mind. An example of a micro interaction would be the download animation you see after tapping a file to download or the animation and sound you hear when you lock and unlock your phone. A micro interaction has one single purpose, to create an emotional moment that is engaging, informative  and constructive for next step we want targeted user to perform.

There are four basic elements that make up a micro interaction.

The first is a trigger, which is what initiates the interaction. This could be anything from clicking a specific element on the interface or touching a notification that pops up. A trigger can be user-initiated or a system-initiated trigger, which requires software to initiate an action once certain qualifications are met.

The second element are the rules that determine what happens once a micro interaction has been triggered.

The third is the feedback provided to help the user understand what is happening. While a micro interaction is occurring, anything that the user hears, sees, or feels is considered feedback. In most cases, feedback is provided to show the user that the micro interaction has been successfully completed.

Finally, the fourth, the loops and modes that are used to determine the duration of the interaction and what actions the user needs to make to continue the process of the event. These also determine what happens to a micro interaction when the conditions or rule sets change.

Why Do Micro Interactions Matter?

 

The primary reason why micro interactions matter is because they often evoke a positive, emotional response from the user while simultaneously keeping them engaged and interested. Beyond this, they also help with the following:

  • Website navigation is improved as users find it easier to interact with a website that as mini-directions and feedback,
  • They provide instant and relevant feedback about completed interactions,
  • They provide direction or tip off the user as to whether they are using the website or mobile application correctly,
  • They communicate important information about the design interface of the device or software,
  • By providing visual animation and response, a user feels more rewarded,
  • They encourage the user to like, share, or interact with content,
  • They teach the user how to work within the system they are in,
  • They pull in and direct user attention,

When done right, not only do micro interactions provide immediate visual feedback to the user, but they also influence users’ actions and produce positive feelings about your mobile application, brand, and business.

When Should Micro Interactions Be Used?  

In mobile applications, micro interactions should be used at any time where communication is required with the user.  There are generally seven types of micro interactions that should be used at specific times.

  1. Swiping is probably one of the most well known micro interactions due to how interactive it is. Not only does it help guide the user subconsciously but it can help a user switch between pages or tabs of information in an addictive and fun way.
  2. Whenever a user has to input data, using animations like password strength provides some interactivity to an otherwise frustrating and dull experience. This helps keep users engaged with the process while accomplishing the end-goal.
  3. Animations are used with micro interactions as a way to improve or enable them. They can personify a micro interaction, make a micro interaction interesting, and produce a unique aesthetic style.
  4. A current system status micro interaction is used whenever a user needs to be kept informed about the status of what is happening with the application. For instance, when a user goes to upload a document to the cloud, a status bar keeps the user engaged into what is happening and whether the process is successful or not. If there is no micro interaction at all, a user is more likely to get frustrated and exit the application.
  5. You can make tutorials or information interesting by highlighting and simplifying the features and controls of the application through micro interactions.
  6. A micro interaction can be used to nudge the user towards a call to action by providing a rewarding experience for completing the call to action.
  7. Animated buttons are used to provide a seamless transition from one interaction to another. Within this interaction, things like loading bars and special effects show the user how to move through the engaged process.

How Are Micro Interactions Designed? 

Through careful design experimentation. Animations need to be aesthetically pleasing, functional and enhance the user experience. If you use too many animations, this becomes an annoying user-experience and so developers should focus on minimalistic, intuitive, & entertaining designs that aim to please. 

What Are Some Tools Used to Create Micro Interactions?  

  • If you are able to code micro interactions, use tools like Xcode and Android Studio for mobile, Framer for web and mobile, and CSS animation for just web interactions.
  • If you want to design an interaction between a touch-screen push and a module, you can use both Invision and Marvel.
  • If you want extremely detailed interactions, choose Principle, Adobe CC, Protopie, or Origami Studio.
  • If you want to create interactions and add in animations, use After Effects.

Here are few more examples of Micro Interactions.

    

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IN 2016 people will not spend much time with in the App

Yes, you are right , Spending time with in app will reduce significantly in 2016. How? And Why? More and more apps are being published every year . But users have 24hrs in a day. Businesses know that user does not want everything which is residing in the app at particular point of time.

How User Experience is going to change this year?

Imaging your phone is locked, you received a message notification!! how about the functionality to read , reply , delete message from the  notification center? Yes, Many of them have noticed you can do a lot more now with notification center itself. This is going to make communication faster, Will also reduce time spent with in mobile app. To prove my points here are some of my real time examples.

This is will reduce time app user spent with in app but on the other side app user will have a lot better user experience. Specially when all businesses wants you to spend time more and more with their mobile apps.

Biggest User experience change in 2016 would be “User interactions will not require new screens or redirection”

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5 Tools For Heatmap , Mouse Tracking , Eye Tracking

Doing Business online is all about user experience, what users are doing, Success lies on how much data about user behaviour  you can grab on website. It is about monitoring what the user activities and their behaviour and collecting as much data as you can.   It can help on conversion rate optimization, SEO efforts, PPC Campaigns. I am here by giving top 5 tools which are best to use.Here is a list for it..

  1. Chalkmark
  2. ClickDensity
  3. Clicktale
  4. CrazyEgg
  5. Eyetracking

Other than these tools you can surely configure your google analytics and get the maximum out of it.

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Some Cool Examples of Call to Action (CTA) I Found in Last 24hrs

In Past few years I might have visited million of websites, few websites I loved it , few websites  I never returned back. During  this period I observed trends closely and noticed  few things , one cool thing I loved is Call To Action. Sometime good concept does not appeal to people just because of wrong designs. And sometime tricky Call to Action gives a lot of business to simple idea.  So, in online business “Call To Action” is very important. It is rightly said that your conversions are highly depended on your “call to action”.

What is Call to Action?

In very simple way call to action is a tactic or idea which will make user to take some action on website like filling contact us form or purchasing item or subscribing news letter or anything which business owner wants his customer to do.

I was thinking to write on some useful examples of “Call to Action”. My Procrastination prevented me to do that. But finally I have regrouped my energy and here are some cool examples of CTA, which I discovered in last 24 hrs. Continue reading “Some Cool Examples of Call to Action (CTA) I Found in Last 24hrs”