[underwater]

My rule of thumb is that animation is something you only add to your designs when it's already good, and when you really know what you're doing.

If you're relying on animations to hide jankiness or spruce up a design it's probably not going to work. If anything, it will probably make things worse. For example a delayed response to an interaction feels like a slow application, not a smooth one. This is especially true on the web where many animations run on the main thread and compete for resources with whatever is causing slowness.