Jóhannes Kristjánsson is a Product Manager and UI Designer whose core work is building product interfaces, with animation sitting somewhere on the edges of his role: something he needs from time to time, but not a discipline he built his career around.
What changed is not that animation became easier to learn. It is that SVGator made it accessible enough for someone in his position to actually do it, fit it into a real product workflow, and start using it in places he simply would not have bothered with before.
Table Of Contents
The Old Process: Too Many Workarounds
The Solution: A Simpler Workflow With No Steep Learning Curve
The Results: A New Workflow And Animations That Actually Get Made
Animations That Would Not Have Happened Before
The Old Process: Too Many Workarounds
Before SVGator, creating even a simple animation was a multi-hour undertaking. The process involved moving between several tools, managing plugins that did not always play nicely together, and finding workarounds for things that should have been straightforward. SVG animation, in particular, was poorly supported in the standard software most designers start with.
But the time was only part of the problem. Doing web animation properly requires a specific set of skills that falls outside the typical product design role. For someone focused on building interfaces and thinking through user experience, that extra complexity turns animation into a separate project rather than something you can just get done.
The Solution: A Simpler Workflow With No Steep Learning Curve
Jóhannes came to SVGator with a clear set of requirements. He needed a simpler workflow with fewer plugins and workarounds. He needed something he could get up and running with quickly, without a steep learning curve getting in the way. And he needed a tool that could export SVG animations out of the box, without additional steps or conversion processes on top.
SVGator covered all three. It is browser-based, requires no installation, and the Figma-to-SVGator pipeline is direct enough that it fits into an existing design workflow rather than replacing it. For a product manager who animates when the work calls for it rather than every day, that kind of low-friction entry point matters.
The Results: A New Workflow And Animations That Actually Get Made
Hours Down To Minutes
The workflow now is straightforward. Jóhannes exports SVG shapes from Figma, uploads them into SVGator, and works on the timeline from there. An animation that would have taken several hours before now takes between 10 and 40 minutes, depending on complexity. He uses SVGator for logo and icon animations.
Animations That Would Not Have Happened Before
The time saving is real, but it is not the most important thing that has changed. What changed is the threshold. When animation requires several hours and a collection of tools and workarounds, you make a calculation every time the idea comes up: Is this worth it? More often than not, the answer is no. The animation does not get made.
With SVGator, that calculation changed. The barrier dropped far enough that Jóhannes started adding small animations to his UI in places he would have skipped before. Not because he had more time, but because the effort required now matched the value of the outcome. Microinteractions and icon animations that would previously have been cut from scope are now part of how he builds product experiences. That is a behavioural shift, not just a workflow improvement, and it is the kind of change that compounds over time as more of those small animation decisions get made rather than deferred.
Final Thoughts
Product managers and UI designers are not always going to have a motion designer on the team. Animation needs come up unpredictably, the scope is usually small, and the bar for getting it done cleanly and performantly is still high.
SVGator fits that gap well. The Figma integration keeps the workflow tight, SVG export means the output is production-ready without a separate optimisation step, and the learning curve is shallow enough that someone new to animation can produce usable work quickly.
