A colleague once asked me: “How can we improve the upload experience?”

The challenge was simple, users felt like uploading files took forever, but technically, we couldn’t make it faster.

So, instead of changing the speed, we decided to change the perception.

Rather than showing a static progress bar, I introduced motion and feedback through animation. The goal was to communicate that something’s actively happening, reassuring the user that the process is working as intended.

With Rive's State Machine, each phase of the file upload gets its own mini animation, this way the experience feels faster, smoother.

Because when you can’t reduce waiting time, you can still design a better waiting experience.