Why animations matter on Ledger.com/start
Animations are not decoration — they are communication. On an onboarding page such as Ledger.com/start animations explain steps, reassure users during critical security actions, and reduce cognitive load. Thoughtful motion guides attention, clarifies progress, and signals success or errors without noisy text. For a product where trust is paramount, animation must feel calm, consistent, and deliberate.
Design principles for setup animations
- Purposeful motion: Every animation serves a single intent: draw attention, show causality, indicate progress, or confirm completion.
- Security-first tone: Use modest pacing and restrained easing to communicate reliability—avoid flashy or playful styles that undercut seriousness.
- Accessibility: Respect prefers-reduced-motion and ensure animations do not convey essential information alone—always pair with text or ARIA live regions.
- Performance: Keep animations GPU-friendly (transform, opacity) and lazy-load heavy assets like Lottie files.
Common animation patterns on Ledger start flows
Below are patterns that increase clarity and trust:
- Hero micro-animations: A floating device illustration sets a calm first impression.
- Progress steps: Animated step indicators and checkmarks clearly show where the user is in the setup journey.
- Success confirmation: A brief, dignified check + subtle confetti or glow to reward completion (short and optional).
- Error & retry: Shake or bounce the relevant element and provide an immediate textual explanation and remediation path.
- Interactive affordances: Button press animations, focus rings, and hover micro-interactions make the UI feel responsive and trustworthy.
Technical approach: Lottie, SVG, and CSS
For complex illustrations and multi-frame motion, Lottie (JSON vector animation) offers small file sizes and crisp scaling. Use SVG for simple interactive parts and CSS for micro-interactions. Important points:
- Lazy-load Lottie animations only when their section is visible to reduce initial page weight.
- Keep most interactions purely CSS-based (transforms + opacity) for robust, GPU-accelerated animation.
- Provide a static fallback image when
prefers-reduced-motionis set or when JS fails to load.
Accessibility checklist
Implement these to ensure everyone can complete setup:
- Honor
prefers-reduced-motion— instantly switch to non-animated transitions or simple fades. - Do not rely on motion alone — include text labels and ARIA live regions for dynamic updates.
- Keep animations under 500ms for micro-interactions and under 1200ms for state changes; allow users to skip lengthy sequences.
- Test with screen readers and keyboard-only navigation to ensure motion doesn't impair control flow.
Sample snippet: animated progress with accessible fallback
This tiny snippet shows the idea — keep production code modular and tested.
<div role="progressbar" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100" aria-valuenow="33" aria-label="Setup progress: step 1 of 3"> <div class="bar" style="width:33%">