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Stories connect experiences as cause-effect sequences. Connections create meanings and world models. This is how humans approach any facet of life, including software usage.

Users engage with digital products as if they were heroes in a story. They create the story while using the product — a website, a mobile app, or software — to get their things done. Each action users perform triggers a move towards the next step of the story, across successes and failures.

IA organizes words and signs for every possible step users go through when using digital products. The same applies to information architecture, as traffic signs must work for the motorist’s route.

However, when user experience relies only on information architecture, it feels abstract and robotic. That’s where Micro Interactions (MIs) come into play.

If IA were an old-fashioned map on paper, Micro Interactions would turn it into an engaging navigator who, at every turn with his warm voice, makes you appreciate the journey even more.

What are micro interactions?

Joy is not strictly necessary to live, just as it would be possible to live in black and white. However, the truth is that pleasure and color make life more welcoming, and we all desire to be welcomed.

Micro Interactions bring joy to the digital journey. How? Let’s examine examples of micro interactions from a peculiar social media platform: Medium.

Given the goal of attracting attention, Micro interactions matter most on social media.

Medium provides an excellent example of joyful MI when clapping an article.

First, it gives a like or any other static reaction and claps how many times you want (up to 50 times). Second, the visual feedback while clapping is rewarding as it feels your claps resonate, literally.

Third, on a mobile device, you get additional vibration feedback that completes the experience. The writer heard your appreciation!

As the micro interactions example above shows, MIs are tiny, little, and subtle details. Without that behavior, you cannot add some claps to an article.

However, that way of clapping changes the experience. A robot could write ‘+10 claps’, but we are humans and need more!

Claps signal that the reader’s journey has been completed. But that journey started with finding the article, a success of the IA that brought that content to the right audience.

In the Medium context, taxonomy is the IA tool writers have control over. This taxonomy comprises topics — ‘writing’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ in the example above — which behave like tags.

Topics constitute the open path to the reading journey, made possible by discovering articles. Clapping is the reward for completing the journey with satisfaction.

Were the topics enough to attract readers to find and read the article? Yes, but claps add an emotional connection between writers and readers, and that fancy Micro Interaction evokes a spark of joy when sharing positive feedback.

Isn’t that way of clapping an AI enhancement? It adds sense to finding content. That little animation helps reveal the meaning of the writing: bringing a story to the reader’s heart and making that heartbeat.

Where IA and micro interactions intertwine

It’s time to introduce formal definitions to clarify how IAs and MIs play the same game but have different roles.

Following the Interaction Design Foundation:

Information architecture (IA) is making information findable and understandable. It includes searching, browsing, categorizing, and presenting relevant and contextual information to help people understand their surroundings and find what they’re looking for online and in the real world.

As with all aspects of UX design, information architecture starts with understanding people—namely, their reasons for using a product or service.

Micro interactions definition

Microinteractions refer to small, subtle, and often short moments of interaction within a product or service that enhance the user experience. They typically involve a single task, such as liking a post, receiving a notification, or switching a toggle.

These user interactions are designed to provide feedback, guide users, or improve the overall usability of a system.

Micro Interactions are crucial elements that enhance user experience (UX). They offer intuitive cues and turn routine tasks into enjoyable moments.

Understanding people and making tasks enjoyable moments are two sides of the same goal: to give information meaning — to humans.

This is where IA and Micro Interactions collaborate regarding generating meaning.

When humans search through pieces of information, they need to end up with meaningful results, not just results. IA provides navigation paths toward results, while MIs add meaning so that:

Improve user understanding: Micro Interactions clarify navigation paths and help users understand where they are within the IA structure.
Enhance feedback: MIs provide immediate and intuitive feedback, reducing user frustration and confusion.
Encourage exploration: MIs make the digital product feel more responsive and engaging, which can encourage users to explore more content or features.
Support accessibility: Micro Interactions improve accessibility for users with different needs, such as visual or cognitive impairments.

IA and Micro Interactions intertwine in UX design, building the most comfortable perception for human users by using digital products as resonating stories.

Storytelling is the way human brains work.

In his The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How To Tell Them Better, Will Storr reports a straightforward but often forgotten truth:

The world we experience as ‘out there’ is a reconstruction of reality built inside our heads. It’s an act of creation by the storytelling brain.

This universal truth is even more relevant to digital product UX, where software helps particular heroes—users—overcome their troubles. Designing the user experience means crafting the story of the win that users will live when using the software.

The IA alone would present digital products as logical chains of action-rule-result — another representation of the cause-effect rules that give coherence to stories.

Would that be engaging? No, it wouldn’t, as it wouldn’t be perceived as a compelling story but a cold analysis of its structure.

Of course, users need rules and coherent behaviors that, given an action, cause a deterministic result.

But this is what APIs provide to machines. Users are human. They need meaning in addition to efficiency and reliability. They need some narrative beats:

They are small, meaningful units of storytelling that advance the plot, reveal character, or deepen themes.
They might not seem substantial in isolation, but collectively, they shape the audience’s narrative experience.

Because storytelling is a model of human perception, IA acts as the plot scaffold for the digital product usage story.

At the same time, micro interactions contribute to narrative beats, where the digital product’s meaning emerges and is completed through details.

Major micro interactions categories

Micro Interactions implement narrative beats in the users’ journey in many ways. Let’s explore the different categories and reveal how they bring meaning while using digital products.

Button animations

Users press buttons to step forward in their journey toward the result they want. Buttons are how users exercise their will. MIs help make crystal clear what each button does with:

Hover Effects: Visual changes when a user hovers over a button, indicating interactivity.
Click Feedback: Micro Animations that confirm a button has been pressed, such as color changes or depressions.

Form validation indicators

When users enter information into the digital product, they explicitly write part of their usage story and are facilitated by a

Real-time Feedback: Immediate responses to user inputs, such as checkmarks for valid entries or error messages for incorrect data.

Loading animations

Like during a story, there are moments when heroes — the users — must stop and wait for something happening outside their control. MIs keep users engaged and informed with the following:

Spinners or Progress Bars: Visual cues that inform users that content is loading, reducing uncertainty during wait times.

Navigation transitions

Stories are made up of scenes, and digital products comprise menus and pages. Users, as humans, perceive menus and pages as scenes of their journey.

Micro Interactions meaningfully connect it all with:

Page Transitions: Smooth animations between pages or sections, enhancing navigation flow.
Menu Expansions: Animated dropdowns or slide-out menus that reveal navigation options.

Interactive notifications

Stories aren’t linear. They develop beyond the heroes’ control. When the unexpected happens, heroes get somehow notified.

Micro Interactions implement that notification mechanism with the following:

Toast Messages: Brief messages that appear temporarily to inform users of system actions or updates.
Badge Updates: Indicators showing new messages or alerts, often with subtle animations to draw attention.

Interactive form elements

When it comes to choosing, even heroes have constraints. The same happens to digital product users. MIs help them understand choices and constraints with the following:

Checkbox and Radio Button Animations: Visual feedback when selecting options, enhancing clarity and engagement.

Interactive data visualizations

The hero can open doors that reveal more information by moving along the plot. This is what happens with the following Micro Interaction:

Hover Details: Displaying additional information when users hover over data points in charts or graphs.

Other micro tnteractions, not IA-intertwined

The Micro Interactions listed above are the ones that bring the most additional meaning to the UX.

However, others are worth mentioning, even if they enhance the UX but not the IA, like pull-to-refresh and scroll animations. Let’s quickly explore them to show how some MIs don’t intertwine with IA.

Pull-to-Refresh Animations:

The signaling content is updated in Micro Animations and is triggered by pulling down a list or feed.

Scroll Animations

Parallax Effects: Background and foreground elements move at different speeds during scrolling, creating depth.
Lazy Loading: Gradual loading of images or content as users scroll, often accompanied by subtle animations.

Micro interactions make IA a compelling story

When IA is combined with MIs, the user journey transforms into a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.

The organized structure of IA becomes the plot, and Micro Interactions are the enriching details that bring the story to life.

Consider the Micro interactions examples of e-commerce websites:

The beginning is the homepage, where IA ensures users are greeted with a clear layout. MIs, such as subtle animations when hovering over product categories, encourage exploration.
The middle is the shopping process, where IA organizes products and filters logically. MIs guide users through their selections and provide instant feedback when items are added to the cart.
The end is the checkout process, where IA ensures a straightforward path. MIs provide closure, like a progress bar or celebratory animation after purchase.

Interestingly, e-commerce users in the micro interactions examples above don’t perceive their journey as a story—they buy things, they think—but their brains do.

The fact that we unconsciously perceive the world as a story makes those subtle arrangements, such as MIs that enrich the user journey, all the more valuable and relevant but in the background.

Designing Micro Interactions is like crafting secondary but fundamental characters in a story.

Back to Medium’s Micro interactions example, think of the clapping UX, as I already quoted at the beginning of this article:

How many users pause to appreciate their experience by clapping the article? Probably none. Yet, that spark of joy enlivens everyone.

MIs transform AI while leaving its substance unchanged, embellishing its perception by adding story beats. At any turning point, users—the story’s heroes—act guided by beams of meaning through MIs.

Micro interactions give IA personality

Since storytelling is how human brains work, we are used to detecting characters’ personalities within stories.

The instinct to personalize things and happenings—a crucial element of stories—makes users perceive even digital products as if they were characters.

We are sure you remember the last time you saw somebody (or yourself) speak to the screen to free their emotions — either frustration or delight.

We are human and tend to humanize even what is inanimate, and this tendency increases when the inanimate is software that simulates human interactions.

Users unconsciously detect personalities even by pressing a button to complete an action on a website. That button becomes ‘someone’ that is an ally or enemy. And this is where MIs play a paramount role.

Micro Interactions give that button a personality well beyond its function. It’s about feelings.

MIs subtly shape how users feel as they navigate a website, transforming mundane tasks into engaging experiences.

For instance, a button that lights up when hovered over reassures users it’s interactive, while a loading spinner reduces frustration by signaling progress.

Micro Interactions also celebrate milestones, such as a cheerful animation upon completing a purchase, adding delight to the journey.

By offering real-time feedback and creating emotional connections, MIs ensure the user experience is intuitive, rewarding, and memorable from start to finish. Like only stories can be!

Conclusion

Micro Interactions align with storytelling principles, as they evoke emotional engagement and foster a sense of discovery. IA provides the structure for navigation, while MIs add meaning by humanizing interactions.

By integrating IA and MIs, digital products become more than functional design tools—they become resonating stories that align with how the human brain processes the world.

Micro Interactions encourage exploration, clarify navigation, and celebrate milestones, fostering a sense of accomplishment and delight.

They also give digital products personality, as users instinctively humanize their interactions with buttons, animations, and transitions. These elements make the user experience feel alive, transforming mundane tasks into engaging moments.

Micro Interactions differentiate between software for machines and for humans. Machines operate on instructions, while emotions drive humans. Keep this in mind whenever you design or interact with MIs.

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Frequently asked questions

Why are micro interactions important?

Micro interactions are vital because they enhance the user experience by providing feedback, improving usability, and making digital interactions intuitive and engaging. They guide users subtly, build emotional connections, and make the interface more memorable.

What are the 4 parts of a micro interaction?

Trigger: The event that initiates the micro interaction, such as a user action (e.g., clicking a button) or system event (e.g., a notification).
Rules: The logic or conditions determining what happens when the micro interaction is triggered.
Feedback: The response users receive, which can be visual (animations), auditory (sounds), or haptic (vibrations).
Loops & Modes: Define how the micro interaction behaves over time or in different states (e.g., repeating animations, mode changes like toggling).

Which is the most useful element of a micro interaction?

While all parts are crucial, feedback is often considered the most helpful element because it directly communicates to the user that their action and outcome have been recognized. Clear and timely feedback ensures users feel confident and in control during interactions.

How To Leverage Micro Interactions In Information Architecture?

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Luca Vettor

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