Best UI/UX Principles And Trends To Consider In 2020

Advancements in technology have ushered in many UI/UX trends, but along with those some very sound and very important principles have been established.

Gone is the time when a business could entice its users by delivering a pretentious facade of design. What users want and need now is a simplistic yet practical approach to design and understanding UI/UX principles is essential to delivering this.

User experience is the culmination of personalization, simplicity, convenience, minimalism, and accessibility. For these very reasons, companies are moving towards giving more and more attention to the UI of any product based on the UX design.

Let’s take a better look at these UI/UX principles before jumping into the trends.

1. Clarity is prominent

Be it your website or mobile app, if the interface is not clear, the user will ditch it like a hot potato in no time. In which case, it becomes important for you to design an interface that is clear to users in recognizing what is it, and how it is helping them do something. Interface induced with clarity will promote users to keep on using your product.

2. Keep Hierarchy in Mind

There are two kinds of factors – primary and secondary. You need to make sure that these are present on the interface in a hierarchical manner. For instance, a “services tab” on a website must reveal all the services mentioned on the website it is clicked or hovered upon. This expanding menu will only work if the primary factor (Services tab) is placed first.

3. Give Users What They Need

UX is simply based around users, so evidently, users’ needs must be the utmost priority of any UX designer. One must study and analyze what users do and why they do in order to deliver a product that is fulfilling to them in all aspects.

4. Retain the attention of the user

With numerous elements to distract a user from using a website or a mobile app, you do not have to add one to the list. Meaning, your interface should be clean of any unwanted or hogging advertisements and must be timed in a way that they do not hinder users’ interaction.

Now, that simplicity is very in, it is expected that other trends will start to emerge in the market to cater to this particular new trend. So, why waste time chatting when we can have a look at all the interesting trends of UI/UX design that are going to be huge in 2020 and beyond.

UI/UX Design Trends for 2020

1. Personalization

It is hard to lump all your customers into the same basket. More often than not your customers have different needs when it comes to your product offerings, and more importantly they want to feel connected to something bigger than just a product, like a brand. This means making personalization a priority.

Companies have begun creating UI that personally appeals to each user and helps the business make their services more personalized. One case in point here is Spotify, as it creates personalized playlists analyzing the user’s preferences.

2. Multiple-device Experience

Though an emerging trend, for now, multi-device experience is really going to become a principle in the coming years. While more and more people are searching and shopping on smartphones, the importance of being able to deliver a seamless shopping experience across multiple devices can NOT be underscored.

ReadyCloud published some pretty significant statistics supporting this;

• 66% of online shoppers rely on more than one channel for purchases. We reported this in our post, “2017 Cross-Channel Selling Statistics you Need to Know.” Today, about one-third of all customers rotate between channels to make purchases, which is something retailers must pay attention to.
• The average customer visits a site 9.5 times before they convert. These shoppers are busy comparing prices and checking on things like shipping prices and return policies.
• Customers who cross-shop are worth 30% more in lifetime value. Compared to single channel shoppers, these customers shop more and spend more.
• Only 5% of marketers are equipped to market across channels. This means that stepping into multichannel ecommerce now puts you in a good position to outpace your competition.
• Amazon owns more than 26% of the market share. This popularity owes largely to competitive prices, cheap shipping, and easy returns – all of which are offered by the platform.
• 90% of customers want a cross-channel shopping experience. If higher sales weren’t enough to convince you to jump into omnichannel ecommerce, customer preference should.

In this case, it becomes a mandate for mobile app design companies to develop their apps for multi-device functionalities.

3. Simple Designs With a Lot of White

Simple is not boring.

Simplicity in design has always been a strong principle. Minimalism in design can prove to be far more sophisticated and effective in terms of user experience.

It’s very easy to overcrowd a large eCommerce site, but many businesses are working towards a stripped-back approach with limited color pallets on a single page with more content. According to the co-founder of Sellmax, Sean Pour, the most popular and interesting design trends in the coming years are going to be the most minimalistic and simple.

4. AR/VR-powered UI

Though still in the emerging phase, AR/VR technologies are breaking the norms of how things used to be done. AR/VR will allow designers to integrate the real-world components with the virtual worlds’ and render amazing user experience while simplifying the processes, mainly in the E-Commerce sector. One such example is that users will be able to see the 3D impressions of products, making the shopping experience all the more surreal.

5. Voice Interactions

Artificial Intelligence is one technology that has been truly ground breaking in terms of personalization. Everyone from the Big Search Engines are using AI, just like Iron Man had Jarvis, Apple has Siri, Amazon has Alexa, Google has Google Assistant, and Windows has Cortana.

In fact, Google disclosed that 20% of searches made on the platform are via commands given to voice assistants.

In such a scenario, creating your app’s interface for better voice interactions will also be in trend.

6. Material Design

Do you know what is beyond outdated?

Two-dimensional elements, Flat UI design, boring shapes with no added effects. And all of this has been replaced for good by motion graphics, user-centered design process, 3D icons, illustrations, animated logos, custom color pallets, grid-based approach, and whatnot.

In fact, there are many ML-powered features to make the user experience all the more exciting.

7. Gesture-powered Interactions

Though you might have seen many gesture-based features in the latest update of iOS 13 and even in Android 10, this trend is nowhere near done and will continue to the year 2020 for sure. It is time for designers to run the horses of their brains and create applications and devices that render high functionality with minimal gesture interactions. For this purpose, they can even refer to the gesture guidelines issued by Apple and Google.

8. Micro-Interaction and Illustrations

Micro-interactions or animations are usually small design elements having the potential of making a huge impact on the web design by designing ‘human’ feeling websites. One such example is when you upload a file and it goes from 0% to 100% or when you place your cursor in a CTA and it changes color or gets bigger in size.

These were just a few of the most important UI/UX trends as we approach 2020. The list is tediously long enough already and will still continue to grow by the time we actually enter 2020. If you’re struggling with the application of UI/UX principles on your websites or apps, let us know.