Design in 2025
3 Bold Predictions for the Future of Design
Remember the days when nobody believed in the power of mobile, and even the concept of responsive design resulted in a trail of skeptics? Design is an incredibly fast changing field, where the standards of today can already be on its way out tomorrow (I’m looking at you Sketch). I recently had the pleasure of attending the Awwwards design conference in NYC, where a gauntlet of twenty-four speakers spoke across a jam-packed two days. One recurring theme that particularly sparked my interest was an analysis of the current state of design, and predictions on where it was heading. Through the inspiration of the many design leaders who spoke at the conference, I developed my own vision for our future, and made three bold predictions on the state of design in 2025.
Prediction 1: Out with Design Systems (as we know them)
Yes, I know that design systems are all the rage right now. Design systems improve consistency across applications, increase development velocity, and so much more. However, design systems giveth and they taketh away — design systems are plaguing our community with products that all look and feel the same. Although systems like Google Material Design and Apple Human Interface Guidelines help establish guidelines and best practices within their frameworks, they’re also taking away much of the creativity in design, and the UI out of UI/UX.
I predict that we’ll reach a tipping point in a few years where a resurgence in branding and visual design will push past the boundaries set by design systems. A point when establishing a memorable and unique brand that evokes emotion rather than simple utility will become a necessity for all successful products. This phenomenon combined with the continued improvement of development processes will lift limitations that we have today, and redefine the very concept of a design system.
Prediction 2: No-Code is King
We are currently on the cusp on a No-Code revolution. What is No-Code? No-Code is the practice of using third party software or tools to create workflows and integrations to serve your product needs — all without writing any custom code (minus a few pre-exposed API calls). Now, what does that mean in plain terms? It means that, through No-Code, we’re able to quickly build and test a lot more things without taking up an engineer’s time to develop them from scratch. This should be music to the ears of designers who are clamoring to test their hypotheses early and often.
No-Code tools like Airtable and Workato have already had a huge impact on my design process at AdHawk. We were able to build out a testable product in a week that would’ve taken a minimum of two months to build the traditional way. This saved of a ton of engineer hours, allowing us to test our product and validate our assumptions much earlier than we could’ve otherwise. The most exciting part is that the No-Code revolution has only just begun. Be on the lookout for more of these tools to come out in the near future, and their continued adoption into designer workflows. They’re really cool.
Prediction 3: Farewell to the “Generalist” Designer
During the conference, a speaker asked the audience to raise their hands if they considered themselves a generalist designer. Virtually everyone’s hands shot up. These days, it’s much more common for companies to hire a generalist designer who can do a little bit of everything, because most companies can’t afford to hire a large design team with specialization. However, I predict that the ratio of designers to engineers on product teams will increase over the coming years. Better development practices and the continued rise of No-Code will allow product teams to be more efficient, reducing the number of engineers necessary, and making space for user experience to shine.
The rising standard of user experience along with the increased need for companies to establish a memorable brand will require more designers who are experts in a particular field, rather than masters of none. Additionally, with the development of AR, VR, voice, and motion technologies (to name a few), designers will soon be faced with more mediums than we ever have before. It will be impossible for generalist designers to be well versed in all of these areas. In my mind, product teams of the future will be composed of visual and branding designers, user researchers and testers, product strategy designers, interaction designers, technical product designers, and designers specializing in each medium. Designers will have to be truly great at certain verticals to build the unique, standout products that our users will demand.
So, what do you think? Does my vision for 2025 sound realistic to you, or did I just spew a bunch of nonsense? A big thank you to all of the amazing speakers at the Awwwards design conference who inspired me to write this post, and AdHawk for sponsoring me to go! Looking forward to hearing what’s in your crystal ball.
