Summary and Key ROI
Elevated user experience and emotional resonance, resulting in deeper engagement through visually dynamic entrance effects, profile items, and gifting animations.
2x faster release cadence for motion content from 1–2 to 3–4 times per month, enabling more frequent user engagement.
Animation length expanded from 10s to 20s+, allowing for more expressive and tiered visual storytelling in support items.
Up to 90% file size reduction compared to traditional formats, enabling visually rich animations under 1MB without impacting app performance.
Significant workflow efficiency gains from After Effects design to live implementation—reducing rendering, preview, and handoff overhead.
Making the world more enjoyable with fun content
Spoon is a global tech startup redefining social connection through a audio based content platform. By enabling anyone to create and share audio content and interact in real-time, Spoon provides a unique and expressive way for users around the world to share their daily lives and perspectives.
One of the core interactive features of the platform is its virtual gifting system—a tool that allows users to send digital gifts to creators during live broadcasts. These gifts serve as emotional touchpoints, helping to build community and express appreciation. However, Spoon’s design team identified a challenge: static images weren't enough to fully convey complex, nuanced emotions. To elevate the user experience and enrich visual communication, the team turned to motion design—and found their answer in Lottie.
The value of emotion in motion
Spoon’s virtual gifting system plays a central role in the platform’s live audio environment. Listeners use these digital gifts to thank, support, and engage with creators, making them a key mechanism for emotional exchange.
“We needed a way to better express feelings like appreciation, encouragement, or joy—things that are hard to convey with static visuals.”
— Jake Lee, Contents Designer
Recognizing that feelings like gratitude, encouragement, and joy are difficult to express through static visuals alone, the design team began exploring motion as a richer, more effective medium. This led to the adoption of Lottie animations, which allowed for visually engaging, emotionally expressive assets that felt both lightweight and natural within the platform.
Following a successful integration, Spoon began using Lottie across various components—beyond gifting. During themed campaigns like the “Jelly” event, Spoon incorporated Lottie into profile decorations, entrance effects, and other visual rewards. These subtle, dynamic animations made the platform feel more alive, immersive, and delightful.
Why use Lottie?
Designing for a real-time, audio-based app presented specific constraints. System performance and stable connectivity were top priorities, meaning visual elements had to be both lightweight and non-disruptive.
“We had strict file size limitations—animations needed to stay under 1MB while still conveying emotion. Lottie was the only answer.”
— Jake Lee, Contents Designer
Lottie offered the perfect solution. Its JSON-based format allowed Spoon to implement high-quality animations under strict size limitations—often below 1MB—without compromising performance. Additionally, LottieFiles’ optimization tools made it easy to compress files while maintaining visual fidelity.
Another key advantage was the seamless design-to-development workflow. Spoon’s design team used Adobe After Effects, a familiar tool that integrated directly with LottieFiles. This eliminated the need for complex specifications or extra developer work, allowing designers’ intentions to carry through cleanly and efficiently.
A streamlined workflow, a richer experience
Implementing Lottie significantly simplified Spoon’s animation workflow. Previously, creating and deploying animations required multiple steps—rendering, manual compression, video previews, and handoffs. With Lottie animations, the entire process—from creation to preview to implementation—was unified into a single streamlined pipeline.
Spoon found three particularly impactful features within LottieFiles for After Effects:
In-app animation compatibility checking
Organized folder system with visual preview history
PNG export of specific animation frames for reference
“We could verify compatibility with our app directly from After Effects, fix errors quickly, and skip redundant rendering steps. The workload lightened significantly.”
— Jake Lee, Contents Designer
This streamlined workflow reduced designer fatigue and accelerated the design cycle. Animation production increased from 1 to 2 releases per month to 3 to 4. Additionally, more complex animations—once capped at 10 seconds—were extended to 20 seconds or more, enabling differentiated visuals based on gifting tiers.
The outcome was a more engaging, expressive experience for users. Even a single digital gift became a moment of delight, contributing to a more memorable and emotional product experience.
Motion as a design language
For Spoon, Lottie animations represents more than an efficient file format—it has become a way to translate emotion into design. Rather than serving as decorative extras, animated gifts now function as instruments of connection between people.
“The goal was for gifting items to be more than visual effects—they had to become meaningful moments of human connection. Lottie fit that vision perfectly,” said Jake Lee, Contents Designer at Spoon.
Looking ahead, Spoon plans to continue leveraging motion as a core component of its user experience strategy. With LottieFiles as a creative and technical partner, the company is committed to building a platform where emotion, voice, and design work in harmony—bringing users closer to each other in authentic and lasting ways.
