Emerging Trends and Technologies in UI/UX Design
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a mountain of changes in the digital world as millions of businesses worldwide kick start or upgrade their digital presence using websites, apps, and software. The key changes were mostly related to user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design following the emergence of contactless experiences, remote operations, and virtual meetings.
In the new normal, businesses have to meet users' evolving expectations and keep up with the latest developments in the industry. This is the only way you can stay ahead of the game and adapt your UI/UX design accordingly before it becomes obsolete.
In other words, don’t be another Kodak or Nokia and invest in the latest UI/UX design trends in the market. If you’re not up to speed with them, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered in this post. Read on to learn them!
1. Minimalism Is the New Normal
With attention spans drastically reduced and the rising competition, businesses are taking a minimalist approach to UI/UX design to simplify navigation and improve the overall experience. Today, many brands opt for single-page sites and product catalogs with refined messaging, fewer decorative elements, simpler color palettes, and no pop-up windows.
A minimalist UI/UX design brings a professional impression on prospects and users. Moreover, it offers several advantages beyond an enhanced aesthetic appeal. For instance, with fewer elements, your pages load faster. Moreover, changes and updates can be made and deployed more quickly than traditional sites.
2. Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality (VR) has been around since Q3 2017. However, it wasn’t until the pandemic the business world saw its true potential and implications. For example, Facebook is using the technology for its Metaverse project to create a virtual world where people (avatars) can interact and engage in social and business activities using the internet.
UI/UX design is going to play a significant role in immersing users into the virtual environment, whether it’s through displaying dynamic product descriptions or digital business tours.
3. Voice UI
Many technologists believe that the next phase in the evolution of the user interface is the disappearance of the screen. Voice UI technology is rapidly gaining momentum in the industry following the success of Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa. As of 2022, there are nearly 4.5 billion digital voice Assistant-enabled devices worldwide.
According to Statista, these numbers will rise exponentially to nearly 8 billion. That’s greater than the world’s population. The core function of voice UIs is to make the user experience simpler, more convenient, and enjoyable. They allow users to multitask while fostering a harmonic relationship between man and machine.
Since there’s no screen, the design process typically involves the use of voice recognition and text-to-speech technologies.
4. Data Visualization
In the digital age, a huge aspect of a great user experience is being able to comprehend huge amounts of data on websites, apps, and software. Most designers use graphs, pie charts, maps, and other visual elements to simplify this process. However, there’s been a surge in data visualization technologies that are allowing developers to present data in easy-to-digest and aesthetically appealing ways.
Some of these tools include Fhartist, Grafana, Tableau, Datawrapper, and Google Charts, to name a few.
5. 3D Immersions
Illustrations are rapidly transforming from their traditional flat, 2D counterparts to offer a much better visual experience. These advanced illustrations enable consumers to get a digital hands-on experience when shopping virtually for different products. As a result, brand development teams are rapidly equipping their UI/UX design arsenal with tools, such as Houdini, Maya, and SculptGL.
6. Neumorphism
Neumorphism is one of the most popular UI/UX design trends in recent years. These innovative design technologies allow developers to protrude elements from a screen to create a mix of a flat and 3D image using colors, shadows, and contrasts. For instance, when a user is browsing an app for furniture, as soon as he hovers the cursor over a specific item, it will slightly come forward and become more 3D.
7. Micro-Interactions
When a web or application user swipes, taps on the screen, click a button, or inputs information into a field, this process is called a micro-interaction. Simply put, it is the exchange between a user and a site or digital product that decides their overall experience. As a result, many developers are looking for ways to boost micro-interactions and make them more aesthetically appealing to visitors and users for better engagement.
8. Virtual Storytelling
Digital marketers are no strangers to the concept of storytelling which essentially serves to create emotional connections between users and brands/products. In other words, consumers use emotions more than logical reasoning to make purchase decisions. As a result, most modern brands are combining several UI/UX design tools, including video, illustrations, animations, and parallax scrolling, to enhance consumer immersion into their virtual environments.
Conclusion
So, there you have it – 8 emerging trends and technologies in UI/UX design to watch out for. However, most marketers, developers, and businesses need to realize that the core role of UI/UX remains the same – to keep users engaged with your digital platform. The only thing changing is the technologies behind them which you have to keep pace with to avoid becoming a digital dinosaur.
So, whether you’re exploring virtual reality, data visualization, voice UI, or another emerging tech, you need to be ready to adapt to take on new improvement opportunities. The digital world is rapidly evolving, so there will be plenty of unknowns in the future. Therefore, you need to remain in transition to figure out new standards, best practices, and design patterns.
