the subtle art of shimmering without being obnoxious
25 March 2025
the Eternal tug of war
so, a ticket landed on my plate – It was about adding an FTUX (first-time user experience) to the early rank & college predictor tool for JEE aspirants which is a TOFU Product (top-of-funnel) for Newton School of Technology which is a new age university. Sounds simple, right? not really because the moment you introduce motion, tooltips, or popups, you start a cold war between product managers and designers. PMs want conversions. Designers want sanity.
the setup: what's the product?
the Early Rank & College Predictor is a TOFU (Top of Funnel) product for NST (Newton school of Technology) University. Users enter their rank and details, and we estimate their college admission chances, while they’re deep in this data rabbit hole, we also sneakily promote NST—a little "Hey, students like you also considered NST!" nudge to upsell within their journey. But PMs had a problem.
problem: users don't know about the save feature!
PMs ran user calls and figured out something tragic—users weren’t saving colleges and branches the ‘Save’ feature was sitting there, looking all cute, but nobody gave it attention, low CTRs confirmed it.
now, what does a PM do when CTRs aren’t where they should be? they add more things that demand attention and that’s how the FTUX ticket was born. Their idea was to Add a tooltip on the save icon saying, "Save this college to revisit later." Fair. Add shimmer animations—one on the save icon, another on the tooltip—to grab attention.
now we’re entering ✨ Las Vegas mode ✨. The logic? If users see it, they’ll use it. And if they use it, they’ll see our NST upsell. More brand awareness, more conversions. PMs, I see you.
problem: users don't know about the save feature!
user flow
solution which the PM proposed
the designer's perspective (and my solution)
I had one main argument: Users came here to find their college predictions, not to save lists. If we shoved shimmers in their face, we’d be hijacking their intent. Sure, some might save, but at what cost? Annoying the user? Breaking their focus? My take? Introduce the tooltip, keep it simple, and stop there. No extra movement. No neon-lit "LOOK AT ME" effects let users engage naturally.
the negotiation part – how to get your PMs aligned on your solution ;)
The PM saw my pushback and hit me with their favourite weapon: Numbers!
"Look, if no one saves, NST’s visibility in this journey dies. We need movement to grab attention.
Shimmering works. Data proves it.
Me: "Sure, shimmer works. But so does respecting a user’s flow. Let’s not annoy them.
PM: "But discoverability is key. No one knows about the feature.
Me: "Yeah, because we never educated them. Not because we lack shimmer."
Now, let’s talk about how we actually reached this middle ground without just debating endlessly.
I suggested we run some quick corridor usability tests within our office. We put together a few variants—one designed with the PM’s approach (all-out attention grabber), and one following my approach (subtle, user-first).
Then, we showed these versions to 7-8 people from our tech, product, and design teams to get some quick feedback. Turns out, the feedback helped us settle things. The final solution? Keep the shimmer only on the save icon (just enough visibility, without overkill) No shimmer on the tooltip (because unnecessary movement = unnecessary distraction) No extra animations (because we respect users and their intent) Now, I know what you’re thinking—internal tests have their own biases. And you’re right. People inside the org come with built-in context biases (let’s call it the Echo Chamber Effect for now). But hey, that’s a topic for another blog ;)
final solution
final take: the balancing act
At the end of the day, PMs and designers want the same thing—a product that works.
But where PMs see numbers, designers see experience. The trick is in finding a cute balance, so the user doesn’t feel like a pawn in a conversion funnel. So yeah, we shipped the change, and now we wait. Either users start saving colleges, or we get another ticket for "CTR still low, let’s add confetti on click.
Things which I learned from this ticket:
Numbers matter, sure but so does the experience – as a product designer your job is to balance both
Pushback on some solutions where you think it's necessary – because you're the advocate of your user (Gaurav once said in our standup calls)
that's it for this one, see y'all in the next blog
peace,
aditya.