Creating a great user experience (UX) isn’t a difficult concept to understand, but often not quite as easy to execute effectively and the impact on your business can be substantial. Website visitors and product users obviously expect seamless and smooth interactions and transactions. Mobile devices have made browsing on-the-go an everyday occurrence. If your website or product doesn't meet some key UX design trends and best practices, visitors will quickly disappear to your competitor who does a better job.
What’s more, our understanding of good UX is constantly evolving. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest UX design trends that will become your biggest talking points, and which ones you should take into consideration for your next digital project, so you won’t be left in the dust.
1. Cover the basics, focus on the details
Embracing established interaction design patterns doesn't mean stifling creativity; rather, it's about leveraging a foundation of proven solutions to enhance usability and accessibility. A wealth of pattern libraries and guidelines stand ready to inspire designers, offering models that resonate with familiarity, thus making it easier for users to navigate your interface and achieve their objectives efficiently. Familiarity breeds comfort, and by reducing cognitive load, we make online decision-making a more intuitive and seamless experience for everyone involved.
Pattern libraries and guidelines empower your designers to not only meet but exceed basic usability standards, enabling them to infuse your digital product with unique elements that elevate the user experience from ordinary to extraordinary. By equipping your team with the optimal resources for success, you cultivate an environment where the customer experience is not just a responsibility, but a shared passion across your organisation.
Today, every aspect of usability must be automated for seamless collaboration within your team. Tools like Sketch (which brings real data to design mockups) and Invision (a high-fidelity prototyping tool) are examples of workflow automation tools that will help your designer cover the basic patterns, which can allow them to be less protective of their work.
Bots can even help with research. Automated systems, like HubSpot can assist in collecting data, you just need to connect them. This releases you from task-oriented work to more strategic thinking. It can give you the ability to focus more holistically, once some of the heavy lifting, such as user research, is removed. By employing these processes, you’ll be providing your team with the skills to correctly test and measure strategy.
2. Responsive Design (and other words) that aren’t a thing anymore
It’s not so much about a design being ‘intuitive’ anymore, but that you can prove a solution and ‘experience’ works through user testing and positive feedback. Here are some words that you should probably remove from your vocabulary:
Responsive design
This was talked about a lot in the past, when the possibilities of adapting a design fluidly to multiple screen size was, at the time, impressive. Now with more of a focus on mobile design, responsive design is just another norm. It's assumed that every website is responsive.
Mobile friendly
In 2016, Google removed the label ‘mobile-friendly’ from its search results, meaning it's now expected that all websites should now be mobile-friendly . If your website isn't optimised for mobile audiences, you could be missing out on leads!
Above the fold
Thankfully, there are now less arguments about whether content should be placed ‘above’ or ‘below’ the fold, as the huge amount of varying screen sizes used today are making this an outdated squabble.
2 clicks away
We used to brag that something ‘is only 2 clicks away’. This was more of an issue when our internet speeds were less than extraordinary, clicking a link was a burden and interactions were limited to cursor control.
Human-centred
The whole ethos of user experience design is based on guidance for creating superior user journeys for human beings. These days it's an irrelevant term, largely due to the fact that every company should be bringing their user into their thinking during the design process.
So why should you pay attention to the relevant industry terms? By remaining up to date with the current UX design trends, techniques and processes, you’ll be giving your website or products the best competitive advantage possible.
3. Make it a conversation
You’ve probably heard about chatbots and the ever-rising focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and the ‘conversational interface’. This reflects the idea that every user interface becomes a conversation that mimics what it’s like to speak with a real person.
Look at Uber, for example and the way their app poses questions to the user. It uses the simple goal of ordering a rideshare vehicle to engage in a conversation-like exchange with their customer:
- You tell Uber you need a ride
- It asks where you are and once it’s located your driver, the app will give you a time estimate.
- When you’ve arrived at your destination, the app asks you how it all went, to which you give your opinion using a rating system.
The structure is similar to a traditional question/answer format, but users can now use words and emojis to tell a system what they want.
Apps like WeChat are used by over half a billion people in China. This app covers everything from banking, dating, gaming, marketing, instant messaging, buying food, paying bills and booking hotels, to mention a few, all rolled into the one system. It all operates through conversations and mini-apps that allow for a central destination service.
The benefits of this can be time saving for your users’ as well as your employees by using chatbots to deal with basic interactions, allowing the robots to do the hard work, so you can remain focused on the business opportunities and goals that underpin and shape your customers experience.
Final thoughts on UX design trends
So there you have our 3 top UX design trends! We hope these pointers have highlighted their impact on your users’ behavior and will help you to create a superior and memorable experience for users. Keeping ahead of the curve in UX is important to help drive your company in offering a remarkable user experience design that weaves data driven and collaborative ideas with your campaign vision and strategy, to keep your user returning for more.
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