Can using animation positively lengthen the user journey

Question

When users use an app or a website, different levels of effort and cognitive load are needed at each point of the user journey.

While various negative factors cause bad UX can potentially shorten a user journey, would it be possible that various types of animation like micro interactions and transitions could have a positive impact on lengthening the user journey?

This could be analogous to how certain games reward users with video clips, animation or virtual rewards at the end of completing a task or goal.

By the same logic, can providing small doses of delightful animation at the end of each task/goal lengthen a user's journey?

e.g. compare showing a registration confirmation animation at the end of a lengthy registration form, vs just showing a static confirmation message. would the version that had the animation have a positive effect on the rest of the users journey?

Has any research been done on this before or do you have any experience or examples that could relate to this?

Answer 1

Nielsen and Norman have an exhaustive article on the use of animations -- I suggest you read that.

---

There has been research done on loading screens and animations. For example, one study found that

a loading screen with an interactive animation will be perceived as faster and liked more than a loading screen with a progress bar or passive animation

If you look around the web, you can find lots of best practices for loading screens in particular -- e.g. this Smashing Magazine article.

As for the general case, it depends. If you want to lengthen a user's journey, the user will need reasons to stay and no reason to leave. If the animation gets in the way -- e.g. movement distracting from the main content, or animations that significantly slow people down when they need to be productive -- the user could get frustrated and leave because the animations are preventing her from being effective. If the animation doesn't get in the way and evokes delight -- e.g. a cute loading indicator, as mentioned above -- it could easily enhance the experience. And if an animation serves as an affordance -- e.g. a transition that indicates where something came form -- then you're more likely to keep your user simply because of better usability.