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Every Change Is Motion:
Product Review Framework

Overview

Good motion is easy to produce. Consistent motion across a product with 30+ squads is a different problem entirely. As monday.com scaled, each team was making motion decisions in isolation, with no shared criteria for what good looked like. This project is about fixing that.

Role

Motion Design Team Lead

Concept, Art Direction, & Framework Strategy

THE FRAMEWORK

Review Framework

The Problem: Without shared language, motion feedback defaulted to taste. Reviews were inconsistent, cycles ran long, and teams had no way to self-evaluate.

The Solution: A three-question lens that turns motion from a subjective call into a structured decision.

1. Purpose

What is the primary message or state-change this motion communicates?

2. Behavior

Is this the most intuitive way to represent that change?

3. Choreography

Is the timing and sequencing aligned with the message?

TESTING IT

Preparation & Application

To pressure-test the framework, I embedded with the Boards team during a focused hackathon. Boards is one of the most interaction-dense surfaces in the product, making it the right place to stress-test a review system.

The Process: I mapped the interactions where motion does the most work: drag-and-drop, item deletion, and status changes. Each was evaluated through the three-question lens.

The Goal: Find where motion was creating friction instead of clarity, and ship fixes.

Applied in practice

Boards Hackathon

Each interaction below was evaluated through Purpose, Behavior, and Choreography before and after.

Example 1: Drag & Drop

Before

  • Purpose unclear: users could not confidently predict where the column would land
  • Behavior relied on user "guesswork" rather than visual confirmation.
  • Choreography unclear: multiple elements competed for attention simultaneously.

After

  • Purpose clarified: the drop target is continuously visible
  • Behavior made explicit: the destination is communicated throughout the interaction
  • Choreography simplified: the landing indicator leads and resolves clearly

Example 2: Delete Item

Before

  • Purpose delayed: feedback is delayed and partially communicated via toast
  • Behavior not intuitive: confirmation blocks a frequent action and deletion occurs behind overlay
  • Choreography misaligned: loader dominates while the actual result is obscured

After

  • Purpose instant: deletion is immediately visible to the eye.
  • Behavior simplified: item disappears instantly, undo enables recovery
  • Choreography structured: deletion, reflow, and toast resolve in sequence
  • No loader displayed.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

System Rule Established

If an action has a ~99% success rate, do not surface a loader. Users do not need to see processing, they need to see results.

Beyond the hackathon

The Value of Governance

The hackathon validated the framework under real conditions. The longer-term impact was what happened after, when squads started using it without being asked.

  • Standardizing Subjectivity

    By providing a "shared language" (Purpose, Behavior, Choreography), we reduced review cycles by ~40% because feedback became objective, not personal.

  • Performance as a Feature

    This framework forced us to treat motion as a functional part of the stack. We stopped asking "Does it look cool?" and started asking "Does it make the user faster?"

  • Scalable Quality

    One person can't review every animation in a massive product like Monday.com. This framework empowered individual squads to self-vet their own work while maintaining a high brand bar.