Mastering Motion Design Handoff
A Guide to Seamless Collaboration Between Designers and Developers for motion
Crafting Designs for Seamless Development
Being a user experience designer covers a vast landscape of responsibilities. At the core, it involves understanding user needs and transforming them into practical and visually appealing designs. This journey starts with ideation, moves on to wire-framing, prototyping, conducting thorough research and testing, refining the wireframes, and finally crafting visual and interactive aspects of the product. And with that, we have the complete vision of the product.
Does the work end there? Interestingly no, that’s actually the start of a bigger responsibility. The process of hand off your designs to the developer who will bring your designs to life is crutial a.k.a the dev-handoff process. To achieve a successful product vision, clear and effective communication between designers and the development team is crucial.
“I personally see the dev-handoff process as designing an experience that considers developers as the users, with the aim of achieving a smooth and flawless product build.”
A user-friendly development experience enables the development team to bring the vision to life with minimal confusion or error. The closer the final outcome aligns with our vision, the more successful I consider the design of the dev handoff process to be.
Quick heads up 😂, no matter how perfect you design the dev hand-off experience, it’s not a one-time process; it requires multiple cycles of refinement to align it closely with the actual design :)
Before we explore the hand-off process and how you, as a designer, can create your own, it’s important to understand the depths of our product. Check out these links to get started. If you’re already familiar with our product, feel free to jump right into the blog.
In this blog, we’ll mainly cover how to hand off animations (the second link covers the design details of the animations that we are using as examples in this blog) and will be briefly touching on the rest of the user interface and must haves. Let's get started 🫡
What is the dev-handoff process and why it matters
Breaking it down in simpler terms, handoff refers to the process of delivering a completed design for implementation to the developer responsible for developing it. It includes specifications like layouts, flows, colors, typography, icons, images, interactions, animations, copy, and instructions for responsive breakpoints, accessibility, and data validations.
Dev Handoffs originated from the Waterfall methodology, where designers worked independently on a project and handed off the finished designs in one go to engineers for implementation. The design handoff was a one-time, clearly-defined deliverable in an earlier development work environment. However, with changing times, this process has evolved as well.
Dev hand-off is not a one-size-fits-all solution for developers, nor is there a common template that all designers need to follow.
Just as every user is unique, every developer is unique as well. In the journey as a designer, one will explore and discover processes and methodologies that work for them and allow them to convey their designs fluently.
Having said that, there are a few must-haves that we need to know and include in our handoff documents. If you are someone who is still finding their ground, it’s better to start and follow some of the well-established ones. Here are a few articles that I have come across, which helped me begin my journey of understanding what all should cover and in designing my process eventually.
- Design Handoffs : Interaction Design Foundation
- Guide to Developer Handoff: A collection of best practices from the experts
Handing off motion design differs significantly from static screens. While static screens capture a single moment, motion design involves breaking down movements frame by frame, illustrating transitions and responses to user actions.
- Clear communication and collaboration are crucial for this process
- Using interactive prototypes to precisely convey how the motion should look and feel is necessary when handing it off to the developer
However, there aren’t many defined structures for this that I have come across.
Handing Off Motion Design
Graduating as a computer science engineer, I see the dev handoff process first from a developer’s point of view, thinking about the information that would be required if I were to develop it. (This comes with a few annoying habits that make my hand-off process a little more meticulous than required 😬). I try to cover all the questions that I might have if I were given a certain design to develop.
And when it comes to motion design, there is an endless set of questions that need to be answered. Let’s try breaking it down as a designer first.
How do we design an animation?
After ideation, establishing a clear concept and storyboarding the animation, we have a clear picture of what we want to achieve. Once we have a clear understanding of that, we begin the process of translating ideas into design outputs. Broadly speaking, we follow these basic steps:
- Designing static elements: Creating all the necessary static elements that will be used in the animation.
- Defining element paths: Establishing the paths along which the elements will move, creating the desired motion.
- Setting movement parameters: This includes defining the duration of each movement, the easing in-out speeds, and the overall movement speed. We experiment with these parameters until we find the optimal output.
We are aware of these steps and follow them consciously or unconsciously. Now lets try to apply similar steps when guiding developers to create specific animations:
1. Develop static user interfaces first: The initial step involves defining all the static user interfaces necessary for the animation. It’s essential to provide detailed specifications, origin points or coordinates, and define layers meticulously for the static elements. Additionally, the other essential details required to create a static user interface, such as dimensions and padding, should be clearly mentioned. The static UI should encompass all possible start and end frames of the animations.
2. Communicating element’s path of movements: Next, we document the precise paths for each element’s movement in all possible scenarios. Think of it as outlining every motion an element can perform. If a motion isn’t documented, the element can’t execute it. Clear communication regarding the exact direction and movement pattern for each element is essential.
3. Creating a Motion Graph: A motion graph is a graphical representation of the animation’s timeline, providing valuable insights into its intricacies. It serves as a helpful tool to quickly comprehend various animation details.
This visual aid helps identify the specific element undergoing change, the property of the element being affected (such as opacity, position, or angle), the animation’s start and end points, and the applied animation-timing curve. With a motion graph, animators can efficiently navigate and understand the animation’s flow, ensuring a smooth and cohesive visual experience for users.
And with that, we have accomplished a smooth translation of all that is required to build the animation we need. But is it? These steps and details cover all that needs to be put in for the ideal output but anyone creating it needs to see what the ideal output should look like to create one.
Go the extra mile:
It’s one thing to say, ‘Make this interaction look like this,’ and another to break it down, understand how it’s created, and build it yourself before instructing the developer. Providing a fully functional prototype for motion design during the handoff is essential for developers to visualize the final result.
Take the example of this specific motion design handoff that we covered. We had a very clear picture of what the output would be. To achieve that, we tried several tools, as the Figma prototype couldn’t achieve the finesse we were looking for.
Design tools are meant to transform your ideas into reality, not limit your creativity based on platform constraints. Keep exploring new tools if required until you achieve your envisioned outcome.
After trying several tools, we discovered Protopie, which finally enabled us to realize our ideal motion design after numerous attempts and iterations. ProtoPie is the easiest, entirely code-free prototyping tool on the market that helps design teams create realistic, high-fidelity prototypes. It also has an amazing feature called Handoff, which breaks the animation into an easily understandable timeline.
Here is the link to the fully functional prototype we shared with the developers for their hands-on understanding before development. It's really fun to play around with 😌
Personally, we prefer to incorporate all possible scenarios into my prototype to guarantee seamlessness in every case and avoid missing any scenario. For example, when dealing with the entry and exit of the second and third hosts in the AV setup, multiple approaches were considered. Upon reviewing the prototype, we concluded that the optimal approach was to determine the minimum distance each element needed to cover to reach its destination. As a result, the final paths were adjusted accordingly.
This meticulous approach not only refines the design but also aids in the comprehensive review of the final build.
Tip: Navigating through the file might be overwhelming as well. Hence, it’s a good practice to guide them through the file end to end while handing off and be open to additional details or changes if it helps the developer.
Additional tips for dev-handoff hygiene
In the dev-handoff meetings we’ve attended, we’ve gained insights that seemed basic to me until they proved otherwise. To provide the smallest of examples, maintaining a nomenclature for your hand-off file and naming the frames correctly is essential for seamless navigation through the file. (Even after ensuring all the flows are properly connected with connectors and labeled correctly, I have been asked by the developer how one can navigate from frame 1 to frame 2?)
- Clear Labels and Navigation: Maintain precise file and frame names. Ensure that straightforward user navigation is mentioned between the frames in the handoff.
- Effective Collaboration: Foster designer-developer communication and address questions promptly for smooth handoffs
Being a developer, one of my major responsibilities is to always optimize the code, i.e. to keep the lines of code as minimum as possible. In the simplest of words, more the number of lines of code more time will be taken by the processor to read it hence more time to load. Hence I give my best effort to minimize the number of layers I create when finally putting frames in the dev handoff file. As more the number of layers = more lines of code styling it (CSS code) = more time to load an element.
As a user experience designer, I like to embrace the challenge of bridging the gap between concept and execution, dissecting every frame, every interaction, to achieve perfection.
In the world of Dev-Handoff, the devil is in the details.
From file naming to streamlined coding, every pixel and line of code matters. These subtleties aren’t just about aesthetics; they are the essence of a flawless handoff. As designers and developers, mastering these nuances ensures a harmonious transition from concept to reality, elevating our collaborative journey to new heights.
Final words of wisdom 😇
Here are few key take aways form this blog
- Clear Communication: Document designs clearly and explain them in person to ensure understanding.
- Visualize Animations: Break down complex animations for developers to grasp the concepts easily.
- Embrace Collaboration: Be open to changes and collaborative solutions, even if initial ideas are challenging.
- Find Your Style: Tailor your communication approach to what works best for you and your team.
One crucial lesson for designers is not to be overly attached to their designs but to adapt based on the developer’s opinion as well.
Stay tuned to witness the growth of our product.
