Motion is information, or it is noise

Every animation on a site should be able to answer one question: what does the person understand now that they did not a moment ago? If the honest answer is nothing, the animation is decoration, and decoration has a cost that compounds across a page. One decorative effect is charming. Ten are exhausting.

The three jobs motion can do

It can explain. A card that slides out from where you clicked keeps your sense of place. A number that counts up tells you it is a number worth noticing. A menu that unfolds from the button you pressed tells you where it came from and where it will go back to.

It can guide. A line that draws toward the next step, a subtle shift that pulls your eye to the thing that changed, a button that leans toward your cursor. Guidance motion is quiet. You rarely notice it, which is the point.

It can confirm. A button that settles after you press it, a form that folds away and a thank-you that rises in its place, a toggle that physically moves. Confirmation motion is how a product says "got it" without words.

Anything that does none of these is a candidate for removal.

What I cut on my own site

The cursor on this site morphs between an arrow and a labeled pill. That survived the test because the label tells you what a click will do before you click. A pulsing orange glow I had behind the hero did not survive. It said nothing, so it went. A dot grid behind the headline went the same way. Both were pretty. Neither taught anything.

The hatched pencil bands stayed, not because they animate, but because they carry the identity of the site. That is a different job, and it is a legitimate one, as long as you know which job each element is doing.

Budget it like performance

I give each page a motion budget the way I give it a performance budget. Three or four moments that matter, each doing a job, each animating only transform and opacity so the browser can keep them smooth. When a new idea comes in, something has to go out. This sounds strict, and it is, and it is the reason the motion that remains feels considered rather than busy.

Respect the people who turned it off

Some people set their system to reduce motion, for comfort or for health. Every animation on this site checks that setting and shows the final state instead. This is not an edge case to handle later. It is part of the definition of done.

If you cannot say what an animation teaches, delete it and see if anyone notices. They will not.

The result

The result is not a quieter site. It is a site where the motion that remains carries weight, because it is not competing with motion that does not. People describe such sites as smooth or polished. What they are actually noticing is the absence of noise.