Future of User Interface Design
The User Interface, also known as UI, has played a huge role in computing during the last few decades. This entity was paved for by the development of operating systems such as Microsoft and Macintosh. With the introduction of mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS, the role of UI design has expanded even more.
While the job of UI was always thought to be restricted to the individual engaging with technology and the simplicity with which they could do so, it now appears that UI design has expanded to include the business side of things. Doesn’t it seem a little surprising? That’s the way things is, whether it’s unexpected or not. UI design, like everything else in the computer world, is experiencing a shift, and it’s a big one!
What is UI Design
Every visual feature of a smart device that allows the user to engage with the technology in a relatively seamless manner is referred to as the user interface. When it comes to User Interface design, it mainly refers to the way and manners in which a user interacts with a website or program. For what it’s worth, User Interface Design is quickly becoming the essential difference that gives a business that all-important competitive advantage!
Different user interface designs in future
1. Wearable Computers
Wearable computers, also known as wearable interfaces (or wearables), are small electronic devices worn on the body (mostly the wrist). Smartwatches, wristbands, rings, pins, eyeglasses, and other such items are examples.
Wearables act like a helping hand when it comes to managing physical duties and reminding you of your daily routine. The majority of gadgets are employed for health-related functions such as monitoring heart rate, cholesterol levels, and calorie consumption, among others.
Combining a smartwatch with a smartphone, for example, allows it to emulate many of the smartphone’s capabilities. It provides calling, email, message, tweet, and other notifications once it is paired.
Google Glass and AI-powered hearing aids, for example, are two highly developed instances of wearable technology.
2. Voice User Interface
Voice User Interfaces, or VUIs, are audio, visual, and tactile interfaces that allow people to interact with devices using their voices. The presence of a visual interface is not required for a VUI.
Voice With smart assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google, and Cortana, user interface has achieved revolutionary success, with speech being the main mode of human communication. The future of user interface design is now, and it’s becoming better and better as machine learning capabilities expand with more engagement.
People prefer voice interfaces since it allows them to work faster and save time. Voice interfaces require less intellect and more intuitive responses, making it simple for users to complete tasks or simplify their work.
For example, using Google Assistant, you can type messages by speaking them out loud.
Voice technology is only the beginning; there is much more to this future of user interface that tech gurus have yet to discover.
3. Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is no longer a new concept. Companies have been exploiting the AR experience in a variety of apps, games, glasses, and systems, despite the fact that acceptance levels are still low. It has yet to reach its full potential.
AR uses computer-generated input to enrich the real-world environment and add perceptual simulated or virtual material, transforming objects around us into an interactive digital experience. It has made inroads into a variety of industries, including healthcare, retail, gaming, entertainment, hospitality, tourism, education, design, and more.
AR has shown the potential for a wide range of applications, which is why the market has been saturated with and influenced by this technology. The future of UI design with AR is quite likely to have a significant impact on the market.
4. Brain-Computer Interface
A brain-computer interface (BCI), also known as a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a tool that allows a person (their brain) to communicate with a system (an external technology).
Neurons in our brain send and receive signals from other nerve cells. These neurons produce brain waves, which operate the system in the brain-computer interface. The BCI captures brain waves and delivers them to a computer system to complete the work at hand.
The brain generates electric impulses in response to our ideas, and each thought has its own brain wave pattern. The wave signal is used to control an object and express a concept.
For example, Electrocorticography (ECoG) has become a promising signal platform for brain-computer interface research and application.
5. Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality, or VR, is a well-established technology, but it has recently risen to new heights with the advent of VR headsets.
Virtual Reality creates a three-dimensional artificial environment that a human can explore and interact with, providing a unique experience. The virtual environment is designed to give the user the impression that they are in a real setting.
VR’s potential to provide immersive and pleasurable experiences is propelling it into new fields such as medical, architecture, gaming, entertainment, hospitality, and the arts. It’s just that additional research and technological progress are needed for a high-potential interface to have a significant impact on our daily lives.
6. Gesture Recognition
Gesture Interfaces refers to operating the interface using gestures of hand movements or touch like scrolling, tapping, pinching, tilting, shaking, etc.
In today’s computer world, gesture-based UI has come a long way and is becoming more prevalent in the future of user interface design.
The gesture recognition interface technology reads the movement of the body with sensors or a camera and sends the information to a computer that identifies gestures as input to control devices or apps.
Gesture recognition uses a hand-held controller, a camera that catches movement, or another input device like gloves to capture the movements.
This interface is commonly used to communicate or control video games, entertainment, and mobile devices.
Example: XBOX 360 Kinect uses gestures to navigate the home screen, sign in or play a game. The future of gestural user interfaces in gaming includes the use of gesture-capable movements and touch screens that provide greater gaming control, mostly for 3D gaming.
Next-generation UI design tools
Since the first generation of Adobe Photoshop, which was designed for altering photographs rather than designing dynamic user interfaces, UI design tools have gone a long way. Adobe XD, Figma, and Sketch, among other technologies, have made our tasks easier and faster.
However, inefficiencies abound in our daily routines, and we’re squandering time and resources that could be better spent creating things that people want to use. Although today’s design programs are better than what we had before, they fail to take advantage of contemporary technology, preventing us from reaching our full potential as UI designers.
Integrating Design and Code
Future user interface tools will combine design and coding to give designers and developers a more seamless experience. Our current technologies assist us in creating abstract representations of web UIs rather than actual online UIs. Figma and Sketch mock-ups are separate from the original code.
Many designers today are familiar with the fundamentals of HTML and CSS. Some hardliners create in code, but this isn’t practical for complex projects; designers need to be able to swiftly test a proof of concept before committing to it.
designers need a visual-development environment that provides full design capabilities yet also generates production-ready code.
Parallel Creation Will Replace Designer/Developer Handoffs
There’s a lot of back-and-forth between designers and developers, particularly during the handoff phase. Handoff might take so long and be so laborious that the quality of the work degrades. Developers will no longer be completely responsible for UI design, thanks to next-generation design tools that interact with source code. Instead, they will be free to concentrate on creating the logical architecture that connects a product’s user interface to its back end and allows it to function effectively.
Designers and developers will instead collaborate on more important concerns like whether a design approach is feasible given time and budget constraints, or whether all of a UI component’s states have been addressed.
Mock-ups Will Become Obsolete
Mock-ups are a waste of time and money, as well. They take a long time to create and have fallen out of favor in the digital product design world. Mock-ups have been phased out in favor of responsive, interactive prototypes, according to Webflow. Throwaway deliverables may be appropriate during the ideation stage, but they are a waste throughout the solution stage.
All System States Will Be Accounted For
Every state must be taken into account, but existing UI technologies leave it to designers to do so, forcing them to produce multiple variations of a single component. Developers may simply adjust for all possible states of a component using the development technologies React and Vue.js. Design tools must follow suit, encouraging — even nagging — designers to guarantee that all component states are considered.
Real Data Will Replace Placeholder Content
Just as designers create components for multiple states, they also design for a wide variety of data. UI designers need to be able to test their components with the actual data they are working with. Currently, designers can only simulate data by manually copying and pasting it into artboards. There are plugins that can help automate this process, but they are cumbersome.
It’s also not the solution to ask developers to review how components handle data. It’s too late to redesign components by the time they reach the testing stage. And how would designers know whether a card works with a long title — or no title at all — if they can’t test and iterate components using real data? How will they know if a typeface doesn’t support Arabic characters or if a website doesn’t support languages read from left to right?
Edge-case Testing Will Become Easier
UI tools will enable designers to better anticipate edge cases. Once a component is created, designers will stress test its various states, blasting it with diverse data. In this way, the UI will become the designer’s domain, freeing developers to concentrate on other tasks.
Its impact on everyday life
Science fiction has a lot of influence on the world of technology because it shows us what is impossible. The iPad of today is essentially the Star Trek: The Next Generation tablet computer. Back to the Future II, released in 1989, got a number of things right about 2015 technology.
When it comes to technological advancements, the future is certainly exciting, and in many respects, the future has already arrived!
GESTURE INTERFACES
Minority Report and Iron Man had some of the most memorable futuristic user interfaces. John Underkoffler, the inventor, created these interfaces. With each new summer movie, he claims, the feedback loop between science fiction and reality gets tighter. He continues by saying, “Science fiction and the technology we utilize in real life have an overtly symbiotic relationship. The OS is the interface, and the two are one.”
LIGHT RING
Microsoft Research’s LightRing turns any surface into an interface by using infrared to detect finger motion and a gyroscope to calculate direction. On a book, your knee, or the wall, you can tap, draw, flick, and drag. For the time being, the interactivity is limited to one finger, but it still gives a very appealing and natural-looking option for users to make movements.
Wearable computing is taken to a whole new level with this technology! Imagine being able to control your device from anywhere and in any way you like. The nature of using this technology is comparable to using a mouse, as shown in the video, so we are already familiar with how it works.
ROOM ALIVE
RoomAlive is the follow-up to Microsoft Research’s IllumiRoom, which debuted at CES 2012. Both are steps toward a Kinect future in which “this is our house right now.” By layering input-output pixels on top of everything in the room, the new method goes beyond projection mapping around a TV. RoomAlive overlays an interactive screen from which there is no escape using several depth cameras and spatially mapped projectors.
Consider “real-life” video games that turn your living room into the game’s universe. Imagine virtual home décor, where you may project your image of how you wish to rearrange or add to the decor of your home.
SKIN BUTTONS
Miniature projectors are used in the Skin Buttons project to show interactive icons on the skin around the watch face. This approach extends the interaction zone around a smartwatch without physically increasing its size. The projector parts are less than $2 and can even extend the life of the battery by diverting work away from the primary display.
FLEXSENSE
The FlexSense is a translucent plastic sheet with inbuilt piezoelectric sensors that detect its curvature. All kinds of intuitive, paper-like interactions are possible as a result of this. Toggling layers in maps or drawings, for example, by flipping up a corner to reveal what’s underneath.
Consider phone cases that react when the cover is peeled away. Or turn-of-the-page interactive books or children’s books.
HAPTOMIME
HaptoMime uses ultrasound to create tactile feedback in midair, so you feel like you’re touching a hovering image when there’s nothing there at all. It’s produced by a hidden LCD and an angled transmissive mirror. This technology has massive potential for any public display.
ZERO UI
The concept of a zero-UI is not new. If you’ve ever used an Amazon Echo, waved at a Microsoft Kinect to change the channel, or set up a Nest thermostat, you’ve already used a device that could be deemed part of Goodman’s Zero UI concept. It’s all about moving away from the touchscreen and interacting with technology in more natural ways. Zero UI introduces a whole new dimension for designers, with approaches like as haptics, computer vision, voice control, and artificial intelligence.
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