Microinteractions

In this digital world, microinteractions play a vital role. From the wake up call in mobiles to facebook notifications, we see microinteractions everywhere.
In most of the social media platforms, whenever we interact with the UI, we are engaging in a microinteraction. They use microinteractions for the interaction with the user.

In Facebook, the reaction animations are the best example for microinteractions.

What are microinteractions?
Microinteractions are small events which are used to do a single task. The main purpose of implementing microinteractions is to make the UI more interactive, engaging and enjoyable.
Well designed microinteractions can make a big impact on your user experience. It helps users to prevent errors by providing some instructions.

Structure of microinteractions

• Trigger

It is the initial state of the microinteraction. Digital alarm, notifications are examples of system triggered interaction. Swiping animation is a user triggered microinteraction.

• Rules

Rules describe how the microinteraction should look like. These are outlined by the designer.

• Feedback

Anything that happens in a microinteraction is a feedback. Notification sound is an example of feedback.

• Loops and modes

It determines what should happen over time with the interaction or how long the microinteraction should take place.

Why microinteraction?
The user will treat the app as a regular app if you build it without any UI/UX trends. One way to make your application’s UI standout from the rest is by implementing microinteractions. Thus, microinteractions took its place in the latest trends.

• They improve user interaction.
• They improve the website’s navigation.
• User experience will be great.
• It helps to capture user attention.
• It also helps the user to see the result in a very live way.
• Displaying system status.
• Error prevention

Error prevention
Sometimes users may execute things in an inappropriate way, i.e., they interpret incorrectly when they see new features on the websites. Good design helps prevent an error from a user's expectation about some interfaces. Here we can add some kind of instructions to help user to do things correctly.

Also, we can provide confirmation actions to get rid of error-prone situations. Microinteractions communicate these situations to users and can facilitate a satisfactory experience by supporting undo and preventing rework.

Engaging users

Let’s say, when you trigger a progress indicator, it encourages the user to remain on the page while they wait for something to happen. By adding  some kind of interaction it  will make the user stay in the app with its pleasing animations.

How can one know that the app requires more information?

The app can use microinteraction for notifying the user that it is in standby and needs more information. It encourages the user to continue interacting with the app.

For example, in iOS, when you press and hold an app icon on the device’s home screen, the system responds by slightly shaking all of the apps. It shows that the system is waiting for some confirmation.

Conclusion

Microinteractions are indomitable when it comes to an interactive app. Despite being small, microinteractions have great power to make the experience of using a product more effective and pleasing. Overall, these little details can transform a good product into a great product, and a disengaged user into an engaged user.