How to design highly performant animations and micro-interactions

Animations can significantly enhance user experiences on websites, but they must be implemented efficiently to avoid slowing down page performance. High-performance animations are essential because sluggish animations can deter users and impact their willingness to engage with a brand, particularly in e-commerce. Google's RAIL model provides a framework for optimizing web performance, emphasizing response, animation, idle, and load times. Achieving smooth animations involves maintaining a consistent frame rate and minimizing dropped frames, which can be measured using tools like Google’s Average Dropped Frame (ADF) metric. Best practices for creating efficient animations include focusing on properties that affect only the composition step, such as transform and opacity, optimizing paint operations, and using web workers for non-UI tasks. Techniques like FLIP can also help by pre-optimizing animations to reduce computational load during execution. Developers are encouraged to use tools like Chrome DevTools to monitor performance and ensure that animations are smooth and responsive, thus enhancing the overall user experience without compromising on speed or functionality.