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> like having long and synchronous opening animations in response to an action

I love animations when they make the UI more understandable. I can't stand them when they are more than a couple hundred milliseconds though. I don't even think "synchronous" when I think of animations. That sounds terrible. If they are quick animations it doesn't seem as big of a deal as the long running ones though.

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For me the most insulting part is the inversion of priorities in these designs. The top priority of a UI designer SHOULD be to make the user as productive as possible, yet making me wait for something that is by definition not necessary (like an animation) is nonsensical. A related backward trend is this idea of pushing something in front of my face as a modal panel, with complete disregard for the fact that I was working on something and am now (a) distracted, (b) completely unable to continue doing what I chose to do, and (c) will have problems even after the modal goes away, taking extra time to figure out how to refocus on whatever I was originally trying to do before being interrupted.

That is even true for actions I triggered, for example: I click 4 icons on my desktop consecutively and thus 4 binaries start in the background. The order in which they appear is determined by their startup time: One pops up after another. BUT: whenever one is open and I am USING it, all the ones coming up should not pop up over the current one! This bad behaviour even happens in Windows 10 and many desktop environments.

To UI designers: Have some consideration for the f user!

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