In game development there is the concept of juice. Juice are the little design flourishes that get added to user interactions to make the game feel more fluid and organic. You've experienced juice in any game you've ever played, but you might not have noticed it: it happens when you click a button and the button wobbles a bit, or when a menu fades in gently, or an icon zooms in when you hover over it. It's almost always during a transition of some sort; it's almost always subtle.
You might not notice juice unless you're looking for it, but when you're playing a game you definitely notice when it's not there.
I've added the beginnings of juice -- just a little -- to my menu and UI, more as an experiment about what is possible than anything. And yet, after adding just a few small flourishes to my UI and menus, it's incredible the difference that the addition of juice feels to the polish of the game.
Take for example this settings menu and hotkeys in this quick video:
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