Recently there has been a lot of talk among professional website designers about developing designs that work for actual human beings.

In the past year website designs have become very intricate and sometimes so complicated that, though they were pretty, they lost most of the users. Some of the issues were:

1) Designs so busy and dynamic that the users ended up just watching and not participating. And, as we all know, you must engage your audience in order to gain their full attention.

2) Designs so complicated that the users ended up not understanding what their next step should be or where to click for simple items such as finding the contact form.

With this awareness, many designers have taken a step back and refocused on what is important: The fact that the users visiting the websites are human beings like you and I and that the design of the website should work for them.

The concept and term of microinteractions started to become popular for website design this year and will continue to be a focus in 2016.

Microinteractions are short interactions between the website and its visitors that requires just the right amount of attention and participation on the part of the visitors. By engaging the audience, the website becomes more interesting and memorable to the web visitors. The interactions again are micro aka “small” so they do not require a lots of efforts on the part of the users, yet they make the site fun and interactive.

There is an algorithm of sort for microinteractions:

1) The trigger which starts the microinteraction process. It could be “Select how many stars this company should be rated”.

2) The act which defines what is going to happen if the user does something specific. Example: When selecting 5 stars, some fun movement happens. Perhaps the star moves to the center of the web page and stars shining brightly.

3) The result which comes after the user takes action. Example: Sometimes it is as simple as “Thank you for giving this fabulous rating. Your input is very valuable to us.”

We already know that most businesses’ websites should not be flat and static. They should have some visual interest. Why not use microinteractions to not only create movement but also capture the attention and participation of your website vistors?

Click PLAY to watch our 15-minute video on microinteractions and improving web users’ experience.