Introducing Micro-Interactions, A Secret to Great Design

With the advancement of technology, you will notice how people create small things to achieve bigger things. And love it or hate it, we have to experience this kind of activity every day. In fact, micro-interaction may happen right when we wake up, for example, turning off the alarm on your mobile phone. So, have you got a good understanding of Micro-Interaction anyway? Below is deep explanation about Micro-Interaction. If you are web designers, this info may come in handy for you.

What is a Micro-Interaction?

As it is stated above, we experience micro-interaction every time we interact to our gadget. It can be from the toggle of an on-off switch to skipping from one song to the next on a music player. It also can be from liking a social media post to replying to a text message.

But most of all, Micro-interactions tend to do, or help you do, several different things:

• Communicate a status or bit of feedback
• See the result of an action
• Help the user manipulate something

So in practice, micro-interactions include moments or actions for elements. Stop and think about all the times you come in contact with a micro-interaction every day.

Microinteractions impact things like:

• Accomplishing any single task
• Commenting in any digital medium
• Changing a setting or process
• Viewing a notification or message
• Connecting devices, such as those for multi-player games, or printing from your laptop
• Sharing or liking a photo or video on a website
• Sliding down the “screen” on a mobile device to refresh content

To create micro-interactions, one should focus on a four-part structure. It contains, trigger, rules, feedback, and loops and modes.

• Trigger: Initiated an action
• Rules: what happens in the interaction
• Feedback: How you know what’s happening
• Loops and Modes: what happens next

Details with a Purpose

As in micro-interactions design, the design elements are so small and can happen so quickly that designers often forget about the details. To avoid this, you better keep a few things in mind:

• Micro-interaction must live on through repeated use.
• Give each micro-interaction a human voice.
• Don’t overthink it
• Simplicity rules
• Create a visual harmony with other elements
• Consider each detail with care
• Think about further adaptations or how subsequent micro-interactions will work.
• Add a fun divot with animation, but don’t go too much.

As a conclusion, in the future, you may see many designers use micro-interactions in almost every digital design project. So, the key is to make these moments become completely functional and in the details.