Every animated project eventually hits the same wall: the script talks about something nobody can see, and the animation still has to show it.
For a lot of SaaS products, that invisible something is the whole product. Data syncing between two tools, or a workflow that runs itself overnight. You know exactly what it does, but there's no physical object to point a camera at.
I ran into a very pure version of this problem recently. My wife Theodora, our friend Raluca Mitarca from www.hoverthink.com and I have been working on a short animated film about journaling, and the first draft of the script spent a lot of time on how journaling affects our thoughts. Which raised a very practical question for the person who has to animate it: what do thoughts look like?
To be honest, nobody really knows. It's the kind of question with no objectively right answer, which also means there are plenty of valid ways to answer it, so the useful part is how you narrow them down.
Start from the verbs in your script
The fastest way I know to find a visual for something invisible is something called the verb test: underline every verb in the script that relates to that visual, then look for an everyday object that does similar things.
Our journaling script kept describing thoughts that collide and merge with each other, so that gave me a much easier question to answer. What real-world thing collides and merges in a way people already recognize?
After some intense brainstorming (a.k.a. staring at walls for long periods of time), the answer I landed on was... a lava lamp! Those strange, slow blobs rise, bump and blend together, which seemed pretty close to how a busy mind feels from the inside.
The reason this works is that a metaphor borrows recognition. Viewers already know how a lava lamp behaves, so they understand how the thoughts behave before anyone explains it, and the narration is free to move on to the next point.
The same test works for a product. If your script says data flows between tools, maybe look at waterways, plumbing, ink splotches, or even melting ice and flowing lava as starting points for your visuals. If it says your platform connects teams, you're probably looking at bridges, threads, doors, or even Lego blocks.
Yet finding the metaphor is only half the job, because you still have to test that it works for the script.
Re-test the metaphor whenever the script changes
Since then, we did some more audience research, and what we learned pushed the script in a slightly different direction to make it easier for viewers to share. I'm honestly not sure the lava lamp shots will survive that change, because they were there thanks to specific verbs in a specific draft. Change the draft, and the reason for the metaphor can disappear with it, however much you like the image.
Now, I have to say that we never usually commit to an idea until we have the script locked down, but I liked the lava lamp visual so much I animated a quick test anyway. It may stay a nice experiment with no home, but I'm at peace with that.
Running the verb test on your own product
If you're planning a motion graphics piece about something your audience can't see, try running the verb test before you brief anyone. Take your current script, even if it's just a set of bullet points about the product, and underline every verb attached to the thing you're selling. Pick the two verbs that matter most and ask which everyday object does both. You'll walk into the first creative conversation with a much clearer vision of how your product should be presented to the world.
Then, when the message changes later on, run it again. If the verbs moved, the metaphor probably has to move with them.
