If I can name the year 2020, I would call it a Gamechanger.
The way people interact with the real and the digital world is heavily affected because of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the National lockdowns that happened around the globe. Which made people divert towards the state of survival and making them adapt themselves according to the situations we were going through.
People around the globe have not only started spending more time on the internet; but also made unremarkable changes in their thinking capabilities and behavior as well.
Both designers and entrepreneurs have to be one step ahead of their competitors, For which they have to come up with new best practices and have to follow trends that are going to be eye-catching for the audiences. COVID-19 Pandemic has impacted in many ways, One of them being UX. Now, UX has a whole new foundation and level of expectation from 2021.
The trends that will rule in 2021 are:
1) Cross-Platform Designs: For a Digital Product which is going to launch as a mobile app and Website, the best option is to come up with a cross-platform design for cross-platform development.
It uses a single code base to bring the whole thing to life on desktop screens and mobile phone screens, at the same time reducing the time investment to develop by eliminating a large amount of time in terms of the development of the product for different platforms. Developers can use React Native and progressive frameworks to make the whole user interface more expressive.
It brings consistency to the whole design while maintaining the look and feel of the UX/UI Design. The best thing about this approach is it reduces the time consumption that designers have to invest while designing the whole thing. The designers can work on the designs keeping the criteria of multi-device support in mind from the starting itself. The cross-platform design is highly efficient in terms of money and time, Which makes this one heck of a trend to follow in 2021.
2) Voice Interfaces: The whole 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic revolved around the no-touch policy, which made the Voice interfaces one of the most useful features a digital product can have. In 2021, the Voice Interface trend will hold a high preference, Since no human being is ready to put themselves or people close to them at risk by interacting with random touch panels or systems. Instead, people would prefer interacting with them through voice commands.
You don’t have to be a genius to express your thoughts through voice commands in a wide variety of applications, and thus this trend of Voice interfaces will be a powerful tool in coming scenarios. When it comes to digital experiences, Users prefer it to be simple at the same time efficient. The rapid growth in the artificial sector has increased market demand and high expectations for the users for the voice interfaces for a more interactive user experience. Already, a wide range of industries is focussing on voice-based interfaces for their upcoming products. And the year 2021 is just the starting of it.
3) Negative Space: The space surrounding, within, and between an image or an element, looks like a separate element on its own is known as Negative Space. It shares outline and borders with positive space, creating the right proportion and making negative space as important as positive space is.
What makes it meaningful is the emptiness in the space we leave, which brings calm to the cluttered design. Negative space is a known trend in the UX Design community that has become a whole separate element on its own. The purpose of the negative space is to drive users’ attention towards important and crucial texts or objects. To draw the focus of the users towards something, UX Designers have to establish a proper hierarchy of content.
4) Not So Regular Typography: Since the year 2020 was not a regular one, We are expecting irregular design trends in 2021 as well. UX Designers have already realized the importance of typography way back. But as time passes, new trends and fonts are knocking on the door every year passing by. This time the changes are very different as compared to any other previous years. This coming year it’s all about the large font-size, alignment, positioning of the text on the screen, prominence, and none other than whole new fonts.
Every brand in 2021 wants to make its presence by dominating fonts that will cover the images or will replace them entirely. The things designers will focus on in 2021 will be size and quality instead of the quantity of the content, Making key words and sentences more prominent and huge to make an impeccable impact on the users’. Distorted fonts, contrasting colors, and scattered content are some of the tactics to bring attention to the text we need our target audience to read. All of these tactics are for sure are the best to create a catchy visual hierarchy that will make users’ move forward in the direction we want them to.
5) 3D Elements & Microinteractions: 3D Elements and Micro-Interactions are not very new in the UX Design industry. We have been implementing both of these trends in Websites and as well as in Mobile applications. UX Designers are taking 3D Elements to the next level with GIFs and making them more interactive with the help of Micro-Interactions.
Motion attracts users’ vision and thus proves to be one of the best trends to making things more prominent on the screen. By adding a subtle animation to buttons, tabs, menus, cards, icons, and other UI elements, promotes the trigger points for the users. However, This not only makes the user experience better but also enhances the engagement of the user with the product. Micro-Interactions keeps the users involved while interacting with the user interface by providing them with appropriate feedback and prompts. Putting little-little animated elements in every illustration makes it more interesting instead of keeping them with no animation. Micro-Interaction also helps in increasing the users’ CTA button engagements, which results in more clicks and more closing of the deals.
Conclusion
If you find an element of your interface which requires instructions… Redesign it.
– Dan Rubin
We have realized how competitive the UX & UI Industry has become due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. And 2021 will be the start of a new war between brands for keeping their existence on top. UX Designers have to think ahead of time and had to break existing rules to come up with new creative ways of solving problems.