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UX/UI Design Trends: What’s In Store for Us in 2021?

UX/UI Design Trends: What’s In Store for Us in 2021?

Every beginning of a year we need to engage in this exercise of looking back at the standout UI and UX trends from the previous year and the probable trends that are going to dominate the development and design scene in the coming years. In 2017 we have seen design trends like material design to take over tremendously popular flat layout and in 2018 we have seen more priority to user interaction in UI and UX design elements. Now, in 2019 which UI and UX design trends will stand out or become more dominant? Let us figure out the answer to this query through the following elucidation.

1. Personalised UX

The user experience for some time has become the guiding factor for all design decisions, whether for websites or mobile apps. By incorporating elements of personalisation the UI designer can actually help addressing individual concerns and constraints of engagement. In this respect, personalisation looks to be the most powerful way to boost user engagement and traction. In 2019, we can expect to see more emphasis on this design principle.

But of course incorporating personalisation has its limit and you can deliver completely new design stuff for every single user. That’s practically impossible. This is why we need to know a few specific ways to incorporate personalised UI and UX element. Let’s have a look at some of these credible ways.

  • You can use the proper name of the user throughout the app for addressing him or her.
  • Thanks to better feedback from app analytics and Machine Learning technology you can assess the friction points better and accordingly can deliver UX elements that suit them.
  • Some of the credible ways to use personalisation include sending push notifications in the appropriate time to the user.
  • Adjusting the screen and font size as per the device in use and individual constraints learned over time.
  • A Chatbot providing guidance and answers to questions as per the individual friction level and queries.
  • Apart from these, design based on demographics and background of the user like using colours that suit the cultural backdrop can also play an important role.

2. Purposeful Animation

As the browser capability is constantly improving, the animation can now be better accommodated within the design scheme than ever before. The motion design which actively incorporates principles of psychology and biology

Among everything, new browser capabilities opened the door for animation. Not just as the motion of elements, but a legit design opportunity. The discipline known as motion design involves a lot of design aspects that intersect with principles of psychology and biology.

In 2019, we can expect more emphasis on incorporating motion design principle into UX design. Conveying a lot of information through motion and interaction will become the dominant trend in 2019 and beyond. Motion thanks to its storytelling and explanatory capability will continue to be more popular. Moreover, motion and purposeful animation will help to allow interaction in design.

3. The Interplay of Voice and Visual Interfaces

For some years, the emphasis on voice-based interaction has reached the optimum in UI and UX design. Voice interactions through Chatbots, voice-controlled speakers and voice search across the web and mobile app UIs helped to bring voice interaction into the limelight of the UI and UX design. Voice search and voice interactions have consistently been major UI and UX trends throughout 2017 and 2018. In 2019 and beyond, we can only expect this trend to be louder and more prominent than ever before.

You already search Google on the go with voice commands, right? Well, that’s what half of the population searching web on mobile does. Many of us even listen to the news by tuning onto the voice-enabled Google Home or Amazon Echo. All we need is to tell the speaker the news or content we need and it reads it aloud for us. It works in so simple a manner. Well, voice interplay in the UI and UX has just begun and throughout 2019 and beyond we can expect it to be a bigger trend with new innovations in terms of use and applications.

4. Self-Explanatory Illustrations

Engaging users instantly is something that every application wants to achieve. Earlier, onboarding experience needed to take particular commands and measures to help users learn about using an interface. For some time now, the on-screen design elements became more self-explanatory and intuitive to guide users more effortlessly. Self-explanatory illustrations can help users knowing the way they need to use the app and the ways they need to navigate for accessing contents. Self-explanatory illustrations seem to become a moving design trend for the UI and UX in 2019 and beyond.

5. 3D Interface And Deep Flat

You can now easily augment an image with computer graphics and render 3D viewing. But it is no longer just a fun exercise for visual experiments. Modern computer graphics and 3D images are increasingly becoming crucial UI design elements allowing more self-explanatory viewing.

3D viewing has always been subjected to constraints of performance and speed. Now, 3D rendering of images can is getting more supports from advanced browser capability. As browsers are even allowing to turn the screen for high definition visual experience comparable to movie screens, 3D rendering into UI and UX design will become more commonplace.

Rendering 3D objects apart, even the material design principle with its subtle gradients, shadows and depth is facilitating design comparable to a more 3D object like appearance. As a web and mobile app UI us turning towards more life-like simulation, 3D elements will continue to enjoy more pride of place in UI and UX design.

6. Surreal Design

The 3D rendering, computer graphics, motion design and high definition visual experience all of them together are paving the way for more impactful design than ever before. They are apt to fire the imagination with crisp, sophisticated and fanciful design elements that can easily engage the audience. Such exuberance in visual design will ultimately give birth to surreal design.

Playfulness and fun elements largely perpetrated by social media memes, visual experiments and animations have given today’s designers too many fun ways to engage users visually. This approach evolved into a fully fledged surreal design. From cartoon styled illustration to fantasy filled experiments with colours, fonts and contrasts, in everything we can experience the coming of surreal design elements.

7. UX Writing & UX Editing

Earlier designers only used to give the written words a visual feel with an appropriate choice of typeface. They were not supposed to get into the meaning and impact of the text. Now, designers are becoming equally engaged in deciding about the text that fit the context and visual organisation of words and text. The purpose is to give a more meaningful impact with the written text and their visual representation.

From tagline, ad-line, titles, headings, sub-headings to writing bold brand messages, everywhere designers are equally playing a role to edit and optimise the text along with visuals. This gave birth to two new terms, respectively UX writing and UX editing. In 2019 and beyond, they will continue to play a major role in shaping the interplay of written words and visual design.

8. Buttonless UI

Buttonless UI referring to a complete web or mobile app interface without a single button has become the latest and one of the dominant design trends of our time. Reasonably, we can expect this design trend to stay viable for more number of web and mobile user interfaces. This design trend has been inspired particularly by some social platforms and leading apps like Instagram that do not require any button to navigate and move from one content to another or for taking up another action.

The buttonless user interface will basically help to facilitate more effortless user experience. Thanks to this new design approach, users can easily navigate across contents and pages at ease. In ecommerce apps, the absence of buttons will help easier and more effortless checkout process requiring no clicking of Call to Action buttons.

9. Overlapping Impacts

This design trend is already there for some time and it is continuing to play a major role for many visually engaging apps. Overlapping of fonts, colours and illustration can create more room for rendering messages through design besides allowing more playfulness and exuberance.

A vast majority of app UI and UX designers began to use this design element more wisely and with diligence. By utilising overlapping visual elements combined with shadows can not only augment the impact to the maximum but can also help to deliver brand messages with more perfection and precision.

10. Hero Images for Landing Pages

Hero images are used very frequently at the top of the apps and they provide the look and feel of large banners in apps. Obviously, over the years they became a crucial aspect of mobile app and web UI design. Hero images can quickly orient the user with the purpose and brand message.

Now, hero images are also being used in landing pages. With a classy image delivering the brand message the landing page can connect to the users more easily long before the users actually start reading the printed words. In 2019, we can expect more websites and mobile apps to use hero images in their landing pages.

11. Design Tool Taking Responsibility For Implementation

Designers are increasingly showing interest in coding to stay competitively superior. By simply knowing how to code an app a designer can totally avoid many nuances and render his design on a solid foundation. But designers who can’t code can adopt some really useful tools like Figma.

Designers no longer have to be concerned about an array of variables and constraints ranging from integrations, plugins, storages, operating systems, synchronization, collaboration, etc. There is a design tool called Figma that can not only deliver the most sophisticated sketches and layout designs but can take full responsibility for implementing them as well.

Do you want to know more about designing your app or website with more sophisticated and user-centric attributes? Do you want us to tell how we can ensure design excellence for your app as per latest trends? Just feel free to drop us a message and let us explain you everything.

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Written by Kapil Antala

Kapil Antala is a Design Lead at CMARIX InfoTech, a leading UI/UX Design Services Company with 12+ years experience. Kapil firmly believes that design is an art, which requires scientific execution to bring commercial results. He leads execution of Design Driven Engineering (DDE) at CMARIX for web, mobile and custom software development services.

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