Every transition is an answer to 'what happened?'
When state changes, the user's brain asks a question. Items got reordered: did my item move, and where did it go? A panel opened: where did it come from and where is the close? The list refreshed: what is new? Motion is how the interface answers — and decoration is motion that answers a question nobody asked.
The choreography question is brutally simple: does this motion explain the change it accompanies? If you cannot say what the user now understands that they did not understand before the animation, the animation is decoration — and decoration is the first thing to cut.
For every animation on the page, ask: if I delete it, does the user lose information about what changed? If the answer is no, the motion is not carrying its weight. Keep only the animations that pass — everything else is either decoration or an answer in search of a question.
Three questions that make choreography concrete
- Continuity — does the moving thing look like the same object before and after? A card that expands into a detail view must come from the card's position, or the brain treats it as a new object appearing.
- Direction — does motion point at the cause? A toast for an error you made should arrive from the element you touched, not drift in from the void.
- Priority — does only one thing move like the star? Choreography is casting: one lead, supporting players, everyone else holds still.
Before shipping a transition, answer:
[ ] What changed? (one sentence)
[ ] Does the motion show WHAT changed?
[ ] Does it show WHERE it came from / went?
[ ] Is ONE element the star?
[ ] Would deleting it lose information?The supporting cast rule
A layout that animates everything at once reads as chaos; a layout that animates only the changed thing reads as calm. Motif's staggered entrances exist precisely for this: when a grid of cards appears, the *reason* they appear (a filter applied, a tab switched) is the story, and the stagger is the punctuation that keeps the eye from drowning. Sequence is how you make many motions read as one story instead of many decorations.