The usual approach to designing products is top-down, where user needs are identified prior to building. This approach is quite time consuming and costly. An effective alternative strategy is bottom-up in which individual elements and features are built first realizing the user needs gradually to the end. While the former approach is Macro UX, the latter one is Micro UX.

Understanding bottom-up approach

Designing a digital product involves making use of specific technologies and features of existing devices to build something without having to worry about the overall strategy. With each repetition of the process, a united product takes form and a designer continues to alter that product until it is perfected as per the user needs.

It’s truly a formula for synthesizing a great product design.

Reasons for big shift: Macro UX to Micro UX

• Increased and easy access to advanced technologies like smartphones and sensors.

• Availability of regularly updated and highly knowledgeable global networks like codinghorror.com and serverfault.com

• Easy and cheap product testing options.

• Availability of real-time tracking tools.

These developments make micro UX a low-risk investment and give freedom to product designers to experiment and play with tidbit features.

Benefits of Micro UX

Although Micro UX cannot replace Macro UX entirely, but it is particularly beneficial for small teams handling low budget projects. Other uses:

• Designing experimental products that have no predicated audience

• Designing a revolutionary product to take out existing products

• Renovate an existing product

Micro UX effects and transitions for website

Micro UX has a lot to offer to your websites. Let’s check what effects and transitions it can add to a website, making it even more desirable.

• Motion blur text scrolling: Motion blur text scrolling is primarily there to enhance user experience in which the text blurs while the page is scrolled up and down. This effect works well on sites with dark background and fewer features, but this effect should not be used with too much text as it can confuse the eye. The blur distance and size can be set through a control panel, powered by CSS.

• Direction-aware hover effect: This effect is great to use with menus and picture sets. It uses JavaScript to identify the moving direction of cursor. CSS is then used to animate individual panels as the user scrolls over, providing an amazing scrolling experience for the user. For picture sets, it can be used to prevent the weird visualization of sets of pictures on a single page.

• Sliding boxes: It is an amazing effect that enables the designers to fit double information into the same space. When a cursor hovers over the image, it slides away to show more information beneath. This is quite beneficial to advertise services on the website. For instance, a service title on the top with pricing details below it.

• Thumbnail product details: This effect provides a way to advertise products. When the user scrolls over the product image, the sub-box including price and the ‘Buy now’ dialogue rises up. Also, few additional tabs slide out horizontally to provide related information.

Other effects include vertical and slide out menus, stylish checkboxes, animated check inputs, lock switches, thumbnail effects, percentage bars, countdown timers, flat design social panel, loading animation, flat UI log in, flat design – sliders, etc.

Blending Macro and Micro UX

The best strategy for designers and/or researchers is to combine the best features from both the design processes viz. Macro and Micro UX, with latter performing audience research in parallel with former iterating and real-time testing. This strategy would allow user requirements, as analyzed through research, tune to the actual user use, as assessed by testing.

The arrival of micro UX is quite exciting for both designers as well as users. It liberates designers to experiment and successfully incorporate a wider skill set viz. coding, visual design, and psychology to ultimately deliver a better user product interaction environment. The user is now able to enjoy products with better designs and appeal which is quite a fun.