UI trends weren’t scalable in the first place.
Trends come and go but…few interfaces remain the same
Introduction
The exciting world of User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) design is driven by two seemingly contradictory forces: the pull of fresh design trends that inspire and engage users and the need for scalable designs for practical, long-term use. This dynamic interplay defines the landscape of modern UI/UX design, inviting an examination of its contours, challenges, and possibilities.
In this article, we dive into the significance of design trends and scalability, and we investigate the apparent disconnect between the two. By dissecting the evolution of design with product, we will highlight the importance of scalability and the role of design systems as the backbone of enduring design solutions. Along the journey, we will also attempt to strike a balance between creativity and scalability.
Let’s start at the beginning by understanding what design trends are in the context of UI/UX.
Understanding Design Trends
UI/UX design trends are the zeitgeist of the digital design landscape. They represent the most popular and influential styles, patterns, or approaches that shape the user’s interaction with a digital platform, and as such, they play a crucial role in enhancing the overall user experience.
These trends are born from a unique combination of technological advancements, insights into user behavior, societal transformations, and the collective ingenuity of the global design community. For instance, the increased usage of smartphones and tablets prompted the trend of responsive design, where a user interface adjusts seamlessly to various screen sizes. Another trend, dark mode, gained traction as an alternative visual theme that reduces eye strain and preserves battery life, especially on OLED screens.
Design trends can be both tangible and conceptual. Tangible trends might include distinct elements such as 3D graphics, dark mode, or micro-interactions. Micro-interactions, for example, are subtle animations or changes that provide feedback or guide a user — like a button changing color when clicked. These elements add depth and dynamism to the user interface, enriching the user’s interaction with the platform.
Conceptual trends, on the other hand, are broader philosophies that shape the design’s approach. Minimalism, for example, emphasizes simplicity and clarity by reducing design elements to their bare essentials. This approach can lead to a clean, focused user interface that promotes usability. Another conceptual trend is the increasing focus on user accessibility, ensuring digital platforms are inclusive and usable for all, regardless of physical or cognitive ability.
The design showcases as Dribbble serve as the canvas for these emerging trends. They provide a platform for designers to share, inspire, and shape the future of digital design.
“Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.” — Paul Rand
Platforms like Dribbble embody this ethos, hosting a vibrant community of designers demonstrating the breadth and depth of their creativity.
However, there’s an important caveat that we must bear in mind — what’s trendy isn’t always what’s practical or scalable, especially in commercial applications. The latest trends showcased on platforms like Dribbble might inspire and captivate, but they also need to be assessed for their practicality and feasibility in real-world scenarios. We will explore this aspect in the following sections.
Disconnect between Design Trends and Commercial Applications
In the UI/UX design world, one noticeable aspect is the clear disparity between the design trends showcased on platforms like Dribbble and Behance and what’s implemented in big businesses or widely-used apps and websites. This incongruity highlights an essential factor — the unique needs and challenges posed by commercial applications.
Designing for a large, diverse user base introduces a variety of considerations that go beyond aesthetics. These user-centric factors often require designers to prioritize accessibility, usability, and functionality, sometimes at the expense of the latest design trend.
Accessibility
Accessibility, for instance, is paramount in commercial applications, ensuring the product is inclusive to all users, regardless of physical, cognitive, or technical limitations. However, some trends may inadvertently compromise accessibility. The use of subtle colors and minimalist typography, while visually pleasing, can pose readability issues for visually impaired users or those with older screen technologies.
Usability
Usability, the ease of use and learnability of a product, is another key consideration. The trend of overly complex, high-definition 3D designs or unconventional navigation patterns might stand out on a designer’s portfolio. However, in a commercial e-commerce app targeting a broad user base with varying technical proficiency and screen sizes, these designs might confuse users and hamper usability.
Functionality
Functionality is the third cornerstone for commercial applications. Here’s where performance and efficiency come into play. For example, an elaborate animation might look stunning but could slow down the website, frustrating users and potentially driving them away.
Case in Point 1: GAP’s failed rebranding
Commercial applications also need to grapple with practical constraints such as implementation efficiency, maintenance costs, and the ability to iterate the design based on user feedback and changing needs. Let’s illustrate this with the failed rebranding of GAP in 2010. The company unveiled a new logo, moving away from its classic blue square emblem to a trendy minimalist design. However, they faced immense backlash from customers and had to revert to their old logo within a week. The debacle, estimated to cost GAP $100 million, underscores the importance of balancing trend-driven changes with user expectations and brand identity.
Case in Point 2: Microsoft’s retro design
Another fitting example is Microsoft’s introduction of the ‘Metro’ design with Windows 8, which was a departure from the traditional desktop layout.
In an attempt to keep pace with the trend towards touch-friendly interfaces driven by the popularity of tablets and smartphones, Microsoft unveiled the ‘Metro’ design language. This UI presented a starkly different, tile-based start screen meant to be intuitive for touch-screen users. The design was hailed as trendy and forward-looking, aligning with the emerging preference for touch interfaces.
However, Microsoft’s leap into this design trend disregarded a significant segment of their user base — desktop users who relied heavily on a mouse and keyboard. For these users, the new design was not only confusing and less efficient, but it also removed familiar elements such as the traditional start button and desktop. The attempt to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach by forcing a touch-friendly interface onto traditional desktop users led to widespread criticism.
Microsoft was quick to learn from this oversight. In response to user feedback, they reintroduced the start button and allowed users to boot directly to the desktop in Windows 8.1. By the release of Windows 10, the company had significantly refined the balance between the new tile-based interface and the traditional desktop.
These examples underscore the divide between design trends and commercial applications, reflecting the complex interplay of creativity, usability, functionality, and commercial viability in the realm of UI/UX design.
Scalability in UI/UX Design
Scalability, in the world of UI/UX design, is a testament to a design’s longevity and adaptability. It signifies the design’s capacity to grow and adapt seamlessly as the product, its user base, or the underlying technology evolves. A scalable design is not only capable of accommodating an increase in features or user load but can also flexibly respond to diverse platforms and devices. Scalability, therefore, is a critical attribute of sustainable, long-term design solutions, ensuring that the design remains relevant, efficient, and user-friendly over time.
Consider an e-commerce platform that begins with a curated selection of 100 products. As the platform grows, it expands its inventory to host 10,000 products. A design that was effective for browsing and selecting from 100 products might prove inefficient and cumbersome when dealing with 10,000 products.
Scalability comes into play here: the design should adapt to handle this increase without compromising on user experience. A scalable solution might involve introducing more sophisticated search and filter options or better categorization of products.
Another instance is the transition between different device sizes and types. A design that looks appealing and functions well on a large desktop screen might not translate effectively onto a smaller mobile screen. Elements that were clear and interactive on the desktop might become cramped or unresponsive on mobile. A scalable design anticipates and plans for such transitions, ensuring a consistent and optimized user experience across all devices.
However, the question arises, can UI trends be scalable? The answer isn’t a simple yes or no — it’s highly dependent on the trend in question and how it’s implemented.
Take the example of the trend towards more immersive, interactive experiences with the use of animations, video backgrounds, and 3D elements. These elements can indeed enhance the user experience, making it more engaging and memorable. However, these elements also tend to be resource-intensive, which could slow down load times or increase data usage, and therefore may not scale well when applied broadly across a platform. In these cases, scalability can be achieved by selectively using these elements in key parts of the user journey, where they add the most value.
Another trend is the use of minimal, clean design with a focus on functionality. This trend is inherently more scalable as it emphasizes simplicity, clarity, and usability, which are key attributes of scalable designs. Minimalist designs often use consistent, reusable components, which reduce design and development effort, and can easily be adapted across different screen sizes or platforms.
Hence, while certain UI trends lend themselves to scalability more readily, almost any trend can be made scalable with thoughtful implementation, good design practices, and a focus on the user experience. It’s about finding the right balance between incorporating innovative, trend-inspired elements and maintaining a functional, adaptable design that scales with the product and its user base.
The case of Amazon
Amazon, the global e-commerce leader, presents a remarkable illustration of scalability in UI/UX design. Starting as a simple online bookstore, Amazon has expanded its catalog to millions of products across diverse categories.
With such an expansion, Amazon’s design had to grow and adapt. They evolved their initially simple, book-oriented design into a comprehensive and intuitive navigation system, complete with efficient search functionality, categorized browsing, filters, and personalized recommendations, ensuring users could navigate their vast product array with ease.
As Amazon’s user base and market reach grew, their design had to accommodate varying languages, cultures, and regulations. This required flexibility and adaptability while maintaining the familiar Amazon experience.
Moreover, the rise of mobile internet usage called for their design to be responsive across different devices. Amazon successfully scaled their design to offer a seamless shopping experience, whether accessed from a desktop, tablet, or mobile. This design adaptability has been a key factor in Amazon’s global success.
The Fundamental Non-scalability of Design Trends
Design trends are often born in the crucible of creativity, unencumbered by the practical constraints of real-world applications. Consequently, many of these trends are fundamentally non-scalable. For instance, the trend of bespoke illustrations may make an application visually appealing and unique. However, generating custom illustrations for hundreds of screens or scenarios can be resource-intensive and time-consuming, making it non-scalable.
To cite a real-world example, consider the trend of dark mode. While it’s aesthetically pleasing and can reduce eye strain, implementing it across an extensive app with many screens and components is a significant undertaking. It essentially doubles the visual design work, and may introduce complications with other elements like images or third-party components, thus challenging scalability.
Understanding the Evolution of Design with Product
The sphere of UI/UX design is a dynamic one, and just like the products it shapes, design is subject to evolution. To remain effective, designs need to move away from being static, one-off endeavors and become adaptable entities that can evolve along with the product, technology, and user base. This evolutionary approach to design is not just beneficial but integral to the sustainability and scalability of design solutions.
Think of design evolution as a tree. The initial product release is the seed, the fundamental structure upon which everything else will grow. Over time, as the product develops and expands — much like a tree branching out — its design needs to follow suit. This might involve optimizing existing features, introducing new ones, or even pruning certain elements that no longer serve their purpose.
Now consider the changing seasons, representing shifts in user behavior, market trends, or technological advancements. Just as trees adapt their growth patterns and behaviors to the changing seasons, a product’s design must adapt to these changing external conditions to thrive.
Leading companies like Google and Apple are adept at managing this design evolution. They align their design strategies with their product roadmap and user feedback, cultivating a symbiotic relationship between their products and the designs that shape them.
For instance, look at Google’s evolution from a simple search engine to a suite of interconnected applications. As Google expanded its services — mail, maps, drive, etc. — it needed a design language that could provide a consistent, intuitive experience across all these platforms. This led to the development of Material Design, Google’s design system, which continues to evolve based on user feedback and the expanding ecosystem of Google applications.
Apple provides another example with its shift from skeuomorphic designs, which mimic real-world objects, to a flatter, minimalist design with the introduction of iOS 7. This change was driven by evolving user preferences and technological advancements. The minimalist design allowed for more efficient use of screen space and improved digital readability, enhancing the overall user experience.
These design changes, while often subtle and gradual, are critical to maintaining a user-friendly, efficient, and relevant product. They underscore the importance of adaptability in design, and the necessity of an evolutionary approach to ensure long-term sustainability and scalability.
Thus, UI/UX design is not a static artifact but a living, evolving entity. It’s a journey of continuous learning, iteration, and adaptation that ensures designs grow in tandem with the product, serving the users’ changing needs effectively. This dynamic, evolutionary process is at the heart of sustainable, scalable design solutions.
Design Systems: The Foundation of Scalability
Scalable design is anchored by design systems. A design system is a comprehensive set of design standards, documentation, and principles, along with the toolkit of UI patterns and code components. It serves as a single source of truth for all design decisions, ensuring consistency across the product and speeding up the design and development process.
Design systems play a pivotal role in scaling design by providing reusable, modular components that can be combined and reconfigured to accommodate expanding needs. They reduce the effort required to maintain and iterate the design, ensuring efficient, consistent experiences across different platforms and devices.
Despite their benefits, creating and maintaining design systems is not without challenges. They require significant upfront investment and ongoing commitment to keep them up-to-date. Achieving buy-in from all stakeholders can be tough, and coordinating between design and development teams for implementation can be complex. Yet, the return on investment of a well-managed design system in terms of scalability and consistency is often worth the effort.
Balancing Creativity and Scalability
Design is a fine balance between form and function, creativity and usability, innovation and scalability. While trends can fuel creativity and foster a delightful user experience, they need to be weighed against their practicality and scalability. Striking this balance is a key skill for designers.
Designers can integrate trends into their work by adopting a selective, thoughtful approach, leveraging trends that enhance user experience and align with the product’s context and future roadmap. They should also harness the power of design systems to implement trendy design elements in a scalable manner.
For instance, consider the trend of neumorphism. Instead of applying it across the entire application, which may cause accessibility issues and be resource-intensive, designers could use it sparingly for specific elements like buttons or cards, provided it aligns with the overall design language. This approach allows designers to infuse freshness into their design while ensuring scalability.
Conclusion
Design trends and scalability are both integral to the realm of UI/UX design. Trends inspire creativity and help shape engaging user experiences, while scalability ensures the longevity and efficiency of design solutions. However, there is often a disconnect between the two, with trendy designs rarely being implemented in commercial applications due to their inherent non-scalability and the unique challenges of these applications.
Written by: Inchara, kubo media team.
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