Top 6 UX Trends That Are Heating The Market
One thing that all current UX trends seem to have in common is personalization — see just how important that role is in the development of your App or online store.
Image Credit: @goumbik, Pexels
Every sector is marked by constant evolution. Growth and survival are the two major consequences of continually advancing and ushering in changes that are embraced by users. Change is the foundation for every business that aims to flourish and that includes User Experience. The principles behind UX don’t really change much, but technology does drive change in User Experience trends.
With technology constantly upgrading and pulling up its sleeves to meet new demands of end users, UX is increasingly impacted by augmented reality, 3D technology, and frameless devices. Web Designers keep trying new approaches to creating a truly mesmerizing UX design that offers matchless functionality.
Let’s discover some of the latest UX trends that are topping the popularity charts.
1. Voice Powered Design:
With voice technology gaining maturity, voice-based assistants, including Google Home, Siri and Alexa, have already become routine in our daily lives. So much so, that it’s becoming second nature for many of us to ask Alexa first.
Just think about when the last time you asked your smart device to;
•send a message
• search for something
• play a song, etc.
All this is based on voice command and this makes voice design a first preference. A voice-first design implies that voice is the first criteria to be considered when initiating a design and secondly, the screen.
Enhancing the quality of voice interaction, a voice-first design relies on multi-modal interface (presenting screen as the next step in the design) leading to an uninterrupted interaction. It is a fine act adding the right balance of personality with context to the AI without any perceivable overload. With voice powered designs taking the front seat, UX designers will have to take a meticulous and calculative approach as far as language is concerned. Site navigation as well as information architecture will have to be framed with voice-first as the basic strategy.
2. Feelings-based Design:
Image Credit: @Pixabay Pexels
The role of design is to bridge technology with human experience — this requires emotion. This is exactly why Emoticons have grown tremendously in number; there are emoticons for expressing any emotion you can name. Breathing life into emoticons and mojis personalizes artificial intelligence technology.
UX design considers how a user interacts with and responds to an interface, service or product. ~Toptal
Personalized experience has proven to be exponentially effective in app design, ecommerce, email marketing and automation tools for marketing. With this trend on the charts, chatbots and emoticons will have to be more expressive than ever. Simply put, the overall interaction of a user with such AI powered systems will have to be more engaging and this will be made by catechizing feelings in the design aspect.
3. Augmented Reality (AR):
One of the most significant trends in the arena of UX is the boom of augmented reality. What commenced with gaming is now being utilized to perform complex surgeries; there are no limits to what AR can do. Used to generate a versatile user experience, AR now holds an important place when it comes to UX. AR is increasingly used to give a real feel of how the end product will look like.
For instance, with the implementation of this technology, furniture vendors can easily create a visual to let users see how a specific couch or bookcase will look like in their interiors. Giving a real walk-through to end users, AR enhances the end user experience.
Using AR in UX design is no more optional but a do or die proposition.
4. Frameless, Infinite Experiences:
Image Credit: @Pixabay Pexels
The expectations of users have reached new heights providing power to frameless spaces. Going beyond the existing screen space, a frameless experience gives users the privilege to view photos and videos from a whole new level. These changing desires of users will have to be considered by designers working on UX of a website, app, or any software system.
UX designers must create a design which makes the maximum use of the screen space, deliver a rich content experience, along with excellent image and video quality. These criteria must be achieved by designers while keeping the comfort level of users in consideration. In no case, function of the design must be compromised. Users must be able to avail of full-screen experience with ease and not with any arduous efforts.
5. Device- Agnostic Design:
One of the chief trends ruling the UX design charts is providing seamless experience across various devices. As users shift from a website to a mobile experience, the design must offer the same level of comfort and ease to be accessible. With the expansion of number of devices and systems, it is imperative for UX designers to provide a uniform experience across multiple platforms or devices. Design must be created contemplating on all the possible devices which the user may utilize to access a website, app, or a software system.
6. Biometric Authentication:
As devices continue permeating into our personal lives and major time of our day being spent on them, it becomes critical to protect and secure them. Authentications have advanced from a simple passcode to thumb or fingerprints and facial recognition. Increasing use of biometrics for authenticating users to access devices is one of the significant trends observed in the UX industry. With the growth of new tools, voice recognition, iris scanning, vein pattern authentication, etc. are quickly replacing fingerprints and pass codes. This is an important consideration while creating a design for any website or an app.
In Conclusion:
Like all other industries, UX is constantly changing and new trends are replacing existing ones. These trends which may seem new to you will become already existing within few months and perhaps may become outdated after a year. With consistent growth of new devices and technologies, designers will have to will subsequently change the way they do UX. Keeping a close and constant tab on the ongoing trends will help designers to maximize creativity and innovation in the UX architecture.
