How UX/ UI Design Changes After The COVID-19 Pandemic
A short overview of a new era for design & technology, what we should expect in the future from a UX/UI perspective, and the ways in which design will help the emerging technologies
First of all, let’s start talking a little bit about the Covid-19 pandemic concerning the fact that many of us already know a lot about this considering that more than 1 year has already passed. A year in which many things have changed, for better or for worse.
First of all, technology has had to evolve vigorously in order to help other industries and fields now more than ever. This, of course, will further help humanity to evolve at a fast-moving pace, and one possible theory is that the world will never be the same. And this is obvious for the majority of us thinking about how things changed so much and why.
It is a new world, many things are changing, and we are at the end of some big cycles, as Ray Dalio says: there are small cycles of 5–10 years, and big cycles of 50–60 years, and now we are at the end of a big cycle, which will somehow give a restart to many industries and we will start using technology more than ever.
A new era for design & technology
Technology will be affecting the lives of every human being after this pandemic, whether we like it or not, and this will definitely happen in the very near future.
The technological evolution in the field of automation will revolutionize many domains such as medicine, education, tourism & traveling and will digitize many companies and countries in the end. And people will have to adapt to all these changes.
The design will be more focused on the psychological part, so I think that UX design and design-thinking will be the most important branches of the new design era. The new design era where the visual side won’t be very important as the part that matters will be focused on the user experience.
The design will pass to the next level, where we will have to rethink the applications and how we use them on our phones, laptops, or on any other device. People no longer have patience, they want to achieve everything fast and simple. That’s why UI design will start to become simpler and simpler, but the UX design will also go through a period of big change, because at a psychological level, many of us have changed our way of living and communicating, and every interaction with a device will have to be as simple as possible, trying to recover what we have lost as humans.
But what should we expect?
Speaking from a technological point of view, many industries and services will be completely digitized after this period. For example, food delivery services, which have had a lot to gain in this period, will try to take everything to the next level, because time matters and we also tend as humans to do as much as we can in a short period of time. For example, let’s put Amazon in the spotlight, which has already started delivering parcels using drones. I don’t think it will take very long until we wake up with the pizza we have ordered at our window, hanging from a drone.
AI&AR/VR will also evolve a lot, from the automation of the tasks, thoughts, and needs to the need for new ways of communication that will establish us to another world, a new world, a virtual one, where probably we will not be able to escape, no matter how hard we try to avoid not getting caught up in it.
How will design help the emerging technology?
The design will be more focused on the information, which will become the most powerful weapon, or it already is. As individuals we’ll ask for clear and fast information to see and hear everything in front of us with just a swipe, we will want to communicate only by voice, without touching anything, and from here on the UX will begin to become indispensable now more than ever.
We can expect a greater number of digital assistants who will help us much more efficiently, and this will be the first step towards a new design technique, namely that of voice control experience. They will be more friendly, intuitive and with a much greater capacity for learning, they will help us more in our daily life to complete any challenge.
We will be on a run in order to take back what we have lost so we will always look for the easiest way to get the information we need. Many of these domains will return to normal such as festivals, concerts, conferences, cinemas, and movies, going to the theatre, and, last but not least, outdoor activities. On the other hand, the online side will always be there for those who do not want to leave their comfort zones.
Traveling and tourism will be back in force, with new digital solutions through which we can get anywhere we want just by pressing a button, and this way communicate much easier and we will discover new places and new people.
Education will have to suffer the biggest change ever, because from now on everything will move to the digital ground, and it will be a fine line between Offline and Online. From the UX point of view, we can expect up-to-date mechanisms of learning anytime and new ways to take an exam.
Are you ready for the future?
That’s a good question!
