In a screencast by Mike Hartington, techniques for animating elements in Ionic apps are explored, focusing on achieving smooth, performant animations. Initially, a keyframe animation was created to slide items from the left by animating the "left" property, which led to performance issues known as "jank" due to recalculations by the web view. To address this, the solution involved using the "transform" property with "translate3d" to leverage hardware acceleration, resulting in smoother animations by offloading the animation process to the device's GPU. This approach enhances the visual experience on devices by minimizing stuttering and providing seamless transitions.