Why Best Product Designers are Adding Motion to Their Skill Stack in 2026
1.5K views · 2026-04-27
Motion Design
Learn cross-functional product skills at: uxcel.com
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Motion design has a reputation for being complex, expensive, and out of reach for most product designers. All three of those things just stopped being true.
That's exactly what we explored in this episode with Jaime Creixems, a Motion Design Strategist at LottieFiles, the platform behind the Lottie animation format used by thousands of product teams worldwide. With 20+ years across development, UX, and product leadership Jaime helps product teams use motion as a strategic design tool.
Jaime's shares that with AI giving designers back time, and the smartest place to put it is learning motion design.
*What you'll learn:*
- Why motion is becoming a core product design skill in 2026, and why AI is the reason now is the right time
- How to go from zero motion experience to shipping a real Lottie animation using only Figma and the LottieFiles plugin
- What motion design systems are, how top companies are building them, and what tokens, presets, and easing parameters actually mean in practice
- How state machines make animations interactive, and how AI builds them for you from a plain-language prompt
- Why you should still learn the foundations even when AI can do the heavy lifting, and how one bad prompt can leave you completely stuck
- A live look at LottieFiles Creator's physics simulator, motion tokens, and real-time text support
*Timestamps:*
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:29 Why motion design now
- 05:51 Benefits of a diverse career journey
- 10:20 The future of motion design and AI
- 13:47 Integrating motion in product roles
- 15:59 Tools and techniques for learning motion design
- 23:39 Motion design systems and brand identity
- 29:34 Practical demo of Lottie plugin in Figma
- 33:38 Creating interactive elements with state machines
- 38:25 Exploring motion tokens and their application
- 43:21 Innovative features in animation creation
- 47:32 Outro
*Where to find Jaime:*
Jaime Creixems: https://www.linkedin.com/in/creixems/
LottieFiles: https://lottiefiles.com/
Upcoming Uxcel × LottieFiles workshop — https://luma.com/uxcel
*Resources and tools mentioned:*
- LottieFiles platform — workspace, Creator tool, and Figma plugin; the hub for building, managing, and shipping Lottie animations
- LottieFiles Figma plugin — exports Figma prototypes with Smart Animate directly as Lottie animations; the entry point Jaime recommends for designers with no motion background
- LottieFiles Creator — browser-based animation tool with AI assistance, physics simulator, and state machine builder; Jaime's recommended alternative to After Effects
- Figma Smart Animate — Figma's built-in motion feature used as the first step in the Figma → Lottie workflow
- After Effects + Bodymovin plugin — traditional pipeline still widely used for Lottie creation
- LottieFiles CodePen demos — public demos of state machines, motion tokens, and interactive animations
- Lottie JSON / .lottie format — open-source vector animation formats; .lottie is up to 10× smaller than the JSON equivalent
*Brought to you by Uxcel:*
Uxcel is a learning platform used by 500,000+ product professionals and 200+ organizations to build cross-functional skills across UX design, product management, and AI. Learn through short, gamified courses that fit into a working day, earn certifications, and build a portfolio with real-world project briefs. Ranked Top 50 Educational Product worldwide by G2 in 2024 and 2025.
---
Motion design has a reputation for being complex, expensive, and out of reach for most product designers. All three of those things just stopped being true.
That's exactly what we explored in this episode with Jaime Creixems, a Motion Design Strategist at LottieFiles, the platform behind the Lottie animation format used by thousands of product teams worldwide. With 20+ years across development, UX, and product leadership Jaime helps product teams use motion as a strategic design tool.
Jaime's shares that with AI giving designers back time, and the smartest place to put it is learning motion design.
*What you'll learn:*
- Why motion is becoming a core product design skill in 2026, and why AI is the reason now is the right time
- How to go from zero motion experience to shipping a real Lottie animation using only Figma and the LottieFiles plugin
- What motion design systems are, how top companies are building them, and what tokens, presets, and easing parameters actually mean in practice
- How state machines make animations interactive, and how AI builds them for you from a plain-language prompt
- Why you should still learn the foundations even when AI can do the heavy lifting, and how one bad prompt can leave you completely stuck
- A live look at LottieFiles Creator's physics simulator, motion tokens, and real-time text support
*Timestamps:*
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:29 Why motion design now
- 05:51 Benefits of a diverse career journey
- 10:20 The future of motion design and AI
- 13:47 Integrating motion in product roles
- 15:59 Tools and techniques for learning motion design
- 23:39 Motion design systems and brand identity
- 29:34 Practical demo of Lottie plugin in Figma
- 33:38 Creating interactive elements with state machines
- 38:25 Exploring motion tokens and their application
- 43:21 Innovative features in animation creation
- 47:32 Outro
*Where to find Jaime:*
Jaime Creixems: https://www.linkedin.com/in/creixems/
LottieFiles: https://lottiefiles.com/
Upcoming Uxcel × LottieFiles workshop — https://luma.com/uxcel
*Resources and tools mentioned:*
- LottieFiles platform — workspace, Creator tool, and Figma plugin; the hub for building, managing, and shipping Lottie animations
- LottieFiles Figma plugin — exports Figma prototypes with Smart Animate directly as Lottie animations; the entry point Jaime recommends for designers with no motion background
- LottieFiles Creator — browser-based animation tool with AI assistance, physics simulator, and state machine builder; Jaime's recommended alternative to After Effects
- Figma Smart Animate — Figma's built-in motion feature used as the first step in the Figma → Lottie workflow
- After Effects + Bodymovin plugin — traditional pipeline still widely used for Lottie creation
- LottieFiles CodePen demos — public demos of state machines, motion tokens, and interactive animations
- Lottie JSON / .lottie format — open-source vector animation formats; .lottie is up to 10× smaller than the JSON equivalent
*Brought to you by Uxcel:*
Uxcel is a learning platform used by 500,000+ product professionals and 200+ organizations to build cross-functional skills across UX design, product management, and AI. Learn through short, gamified courses that fit into a working day, earn certifications, and build a portfolio with real-world project briefs. Ranked Top 50 Educational Product worldwide by G2 in 2024 and 2025.