Comment by Jonathan Wood on "We are the devs from Team Netlify, Ask us anything!"

Hey guys! Few questions

How do you try and bring delight to the platform with design, UX, content etc?

Sarah Drasner are you going to bring any fancy SVG animation goodness to Netlify?

Hey Jonathan!

What I've noticed is that everyone here has a keen eye on how the experience works, listens to feedback, and pays attention to what existing customers are doing. We're also doing some deep-dives on end-to-end experiences- this helps make sure things run smoothly, which can help it feel delightful :)

I started just a few weeks back and have had some conversations with Rafa (Head of Design) and Irene (Frontend Tech Lead) on how we might incorporate some SVG and other types of animation into our site to make it more intuitive! We've talked a bit about making sure the animation is not "additive" (something where you're not sure why it's there) and rather something to guide the users and bring a lot of value :)

We're just getting started on that last one, but I think it's safe to say you'll see some fun stuff come up in the future!

Sarah Drasner - Awesome - thanks for the speedy reply

Netlify is definitely smooth so it doesn't surprise me everyone has UX in mind!

That's really exciting news - I think a lot of people enjoy the work you do with animation and would really appreciate seeing it all over netlify :) I like that concept - you can make a really confusing experience with a few overly distracting animations

Another thing I noticed here from the moment I joined, is that the team works very hard to be thoughtful about what goes into the experience. That is to say that everything that appears in the UI has really had to fight for its place to be there. And to justify how it is presented.

The result is something that I was enjoying long before I joined, and that is a clear and seemingly simple UI.

I observed really painstaking rigour in the team's efforts to maintain this, and to not let things creep in which might feel fun or satisfying to those of us who work on this and see it every day, while introducing noise or distraction.

It's interesting to me to see how much effort goes into keeping something feeling simple.

Thanks for the reply Phil Hawksworth - really cool insight

It's easy to take for granted the difficulty of keeping things feeling simple - it definitely makes Netlify stand out.

It can be hard as a developer sometimes not to overcomplicate your work because you want to work on the new stuff all the time but it isn't usually what the end user wants / needs.

Ha ha, yeah... my own blog is a good testament to that. Leave it alone, Philip!! I take my hat off to the discipline I get to witness. It's a great lesson for me.

The never ending blog restyling is a sure way to lose sleep :-)

Thanks Phil

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