> But they can also do the opposite. They can make an interface feel unpredictable, slow, and annoying.

Indeed, just like the immediately following example, which slows down page scrolling, breaking predictability and consistency of one of the most frequently used and fundamental page operations

And its purpose is, of course, only fulfilled in the imagination of the designer

> This animation explains how Product Intelligence (Linear’s feature) works. We could have used a static asset, but the animated version helps the user understand what this feature does, straight in the initial viewport of the page.

It doesn't really do that: first, it's happening partially out of focus because I read top to bottom, so I'm still reading your title and leading paragraph, or did you want me to be distracted and skip the text? So I see the same thing on first focus: static image. And I can't rewind it to watch again since I missed it the first time.

Then it has a very weird angle which makes all the text harder to read, my guess is to help see the 3D nature of the animation when to show the arrival of the product as a separate overlay? So this would likely not exist in a static image and be an improvement.