UX Trends
Principles for surviving as user experience designers
So I was asked recently to talk about UX/UI trends at a local meet-up so like, any good professional, I googled it.
Because I was pretty sure there were some really talented people on the internet already talking about this, and of course there are, so please free to google it too.
Current State of UX
After going down a rabbit hole of “UX trends of 2018” articles and checking my Instagram 50 times, I was feeling a little lost so I shifted to trying to understand where I was at with my UX career in 2018 and I asked a few of my coworkers and friends how they were feeling as well.
The ‘UX it’ Phenomenon
A couple common themes started to show up. The first I’d like to name the “ux it” phenomenon which I’ve seen others also reflect upon. In the past few years my friends and I found we were being asked to “UX IT“ or to “do the UX” on a project. This usually meant, “hey we don’t think ‘X’ is working, and we think a user experience professional can help”. Which I believe means were seeing a broader and broader audience seeing value in the skills and toolsets of the UX designer. I think this interest is causing us to revaluate what exactly we’re meant to be doing as UX professionals.
source: https://uxdesign.cc/hey-can-you-do-the-ux-for-us-432a38eac295
As the list of things we’re meant to do grows, it seems we have a really big job on our hands, a lot of which we’re not actually in control of.
Another thing we discussed was the tools of the trade and we all felt a bit like Ryan here — we’re interested, buuut.
When starting a prototype I have to choose from, Sketch, InVision Studio, Framer, Keynote and ten others, and I started to spend more and more time deciding HOW to execute my work vs. executing the actual work.
So, for me, thinking about all of this just left me a little overwhelmed, but then I realized well, that’s exactly how to talk about UX in 2018 because I would argue all users are overwhelmed.
For example: average daily internet usage has surpassed an average of 6 hours per person, and at 41 billion users, we’ll be spending about a billion years online in 2018.
That could be checking out one of 2 million iOS apps in the app store, or talking to one of our 14 million Google Homes, or 31 million Amazon Echos, when they’re not too busy creepily laughing at us. Or maybe we’re checking out the current price of bitcoin, reflecting on how we should have listened to our gamer friends a few years back. We’re seeing articles about how even our search engines results are perpetuating bias, and that algorithms work better if you appear to be white, Joy Buolamwini discovered in her research. Maybe we’re wondering if we might be one of the 87m Facebook users who had our data compromised by Cambridge Analytica.
So, I would argue users are in general a little overwhelmed and that user experience as a result, will have some core themes in 2018. Hopefully the right approach to these themes will help us get users from bad overwhelmed to a good overwhelmed like Bill here.
Transparency
Users are demanding more from the organizations they interact with, and the conversation around ethics in design is only going to grow as a result.
The easy example here is Facebook, and Facebook’s interest in transparency in design pre-existed their current scandal, and I believe their designers are genuinely trying to figure this out, admittedly while not risking their advertising revenue streams. Facebook considered a UI that triggered a pop up that helped educate that, the link you are sharing might have other perspectives, and would offer access to alternative links in the hope it would educate users. Of course, this was particularly poignant as we saw the results of the American election in November.
Facebook also made some updates to their privacy policy, though some designers are arguing they could have done better, and policy makers are accusing Facebook of diminishing user concern around data privacy, as they move to avoid the new EU policies.
Moving onto some less contentious examples, we have Airbnb whose product actually depends on transparency, where they create trust by giving users insight into both the renter and the owner. We see the data we’ve shared, photos, behaviours, reviews and certifications. Airbnb isn’t just telling us that they have proof that we’re trustworthy, they show us. By Airbnb providing the platform for trust, their users for the most part, behave in a more trustworthy manor, and the business gains their trust as a result.
Patagonia, who my firm recently had the pleasure of working actually shows on their product pages what they call “Footprint chronicles”, where they offer a look into manufacturing locations and processes for each product.
Everlane takes a similar approach, and also offers a price breakdown, as well as ‘choose what you pay’ model which shows where the users money is going.
Lush who I also have had the pleasure of working with, in a different spin on this, is bringing their ethical business goals, like the one around reducing packaging in their products into the core of their digital experience decisions, where they are creating an app that scans their unpackaged product to purchase and learn about ingredients ethical sourcing and other company initiatives. Using technology to remove the distance between their objectives as a business and their users interaction with the product.
What would a presentation in 2018 be without mentioning blockchain. Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize, in this example digital medical services, and many other human interactions, by creating trust between parties that had previously relied on a central authority, and in many of these cases UX will have to find a way to articulate and make transparent the level of trust and the process of this exchange of information.
Inclusion
Users are not one size fits all, and their experiences shouldn’t be either. Obviously, inclusion has been generating a lot of conversation in the design community for some time, and companies like Microsoft and Apple have been making some great strides in their efforts. But I think for UX designers our day to day will be effected more in by changing our process and approach when it comes to designing.
I think the first step of that is empathy training, like this website that suggests various activities you can do to increase your empathy for a variety of user’s realities. Or the Hemingway app that can help make your writing more readable, and thus more accessible to more audiences. I think those, and many other efforts like diversifying design teams will go a long way towards creating an inclusive UX process. This approach will allow us to start creating inclusive interfaces that cater to a variety of users.
Another Facebook example here. Their approach to the question of gender and their exploration around making that more inclusive and custom to the needs of each individual user. Recommendation: a good rule of thumb here for everyone. If there isn’t a clear benefit to the user, you shouldn’t ask about it.
Shout out to Snap Chat for simply not including a gender selection option.
Integrated
Users have tech integrating all aspects of their lives, and their expectations of that technology are continuing to rise.
You can order a burger at Shake Shack without ever talking to a human of course. Or go to Amazons cashierless store. Kids can read books, that have added elements though iPad apps and other technologies. You can try out your new couch with Ikea before you buy it.
Digital experiences appear throughout a user’s interaction with all types of physical products and services and the lines continue to blur. This blurring is probably why we see more and more interest in the field of UX design.
I would argue that we need to invite in diverse designers, users and business stakeholders into UX processes, like co-design, where we can leverage concepts such as inclusion and transparency within the UX process itself, to understand our users experiences in and out of the digital space. Through this we’ll see more UX designers being involved in business decisions and service design work.
I think we’ll also see a more integrated approach between UX and Technology like this example from Airbnb design teams now open sourced its internal library for writing React components that easily render directly to Sketch. Which turns traditional design processes upside down.
In summary. the world has been disrupted and will continue to be disrupted by advances in technology we can’t keep up with and UX designers have increased demands and a corresponding increase in potential. I propose that with values like transparency, inclusion and an integrated approach we’ll be ready for technologies like these to continue rolling out daily.
Recommended reads
I thought I would give some recommended reading a) cause reading is cool and b) cause some of these books have really influenced my thinking this year.
Whiplash by Joi Ito of the MIT media lab. I really enjoyed Joi’s perspective on how to stay creative and driven in a world that seems to be moving too fast (even for some of the most brilliant minds in the world). Donut Economics, Seven ways to think like a 21st century economist. I had never read a book on economics, but its concepts are inspiring, and I would say the model of thinking is applicable to how we can think about design growing with a hopefully changing economic landscape. This is Service Design Thinking, as myself and the agency I work for become more involved in service design work, this book has been an excellent resource. This book I haven’t read yet, but its next on my list the Rise of the DEO, Leadership by design.
Thanks for reading and please now enjoy my favourite gif of Ryan Gosling freaking out about James Cameron’s font use in Avatar.
and this other one I have no explanation for.
