Companies have now started realizing the value of keeping their users happy. Right from a startup to fortune companies have shown attention towards user experience and interface recently. I believe “User Experience” is not a rocket science to understand and implement, if you thoroughly understand your user’s expectations.
Be it tangible or intangible, any product should arouse an emotional and intellectual response, not only on the way it works but also how it looks and feels. Whether that experience is good or bad will decide the sales, and this is exactly where a good UX design becomes absolutely crucial. If we look at it from a user stand point, they expect a simple, seamless, and interactive UI, especially for complex products and services.
Let’s try to explore the UX design industry and try to understand some key facts which will impact and influence the industry in coming years.
Trend#1: User-Centered Design
In a User-Centered Design (UCD) you design and develop an application considering or focusing on what the end user wants and what could be their potential limitations in terms of using the application. The idea of UCD is to give ‘humanism’ to the mechanical software’s. UI designers should seriously consider user centered design approach, because customer’s need and technology to address that need, both are changing at a rapid speed. If they do not consider these right now I am afraid their application will be obsolete very soon.
Trend#2: Layered Flat Design
This is a new trend in UI industry. Nowadays designers as well as customers prefer simple, clean, colorful and modern flat designs. These designs are user-friendly and responsive, and renders beautifully on mobile as well as desktop. Flat designs don’t use extra effect of 3D or drop shadows hence they look simple yet elegant. I believe this trend is here to stay. People should make maximum use of it, who knows it may bring them some business!
Trend#3: Mobile friendly Designs
It has been a general trend over the years, to design an application keeping in mind how it will look and work on a desktop. We hardly realize the value of making it mobile friendly. According to a research, it was found that almost 25% of internet users in USA are mobile-only, that means they rarely use a desktop to surf the internet. It was also mentioned that more than 1.2 billion people use mobile devices to surf internet. This is a huge number and an eye opener for any application design and development company. I am sure this trend will continue to grow in coming years hence we should start considering mobile friendly designs while developing any application.