5 Emerging UX Trends
Folk’s It’s 2019 outstanding user experience design IS a crucial part of any consumer journey. If individuals have a positive user experience, they are more likely to feel positive emotions towards your brand, product or service.
As the online economy grows, organizations are pushing the boundaries in UX, searching for the next big thing that will delight their users.
In this age, we see new UX innovations every week, so this week on Medium, we look at five emerging trends within UX design.
- Device Agnostic Experiences
Today, individuals are demanding more freedom and flexibility during their online experience and increasingly want to move between mobile, tablet, laptop, smartwatch, speaker and TV. UX designers must now consider how they can provide a seamless journey across multiple devices. For example, if you choose some music on your phone, but later on want to start a different playlist from your watch. This gives the user the freedom to use the most convenient device in their context. The best examples of device-agnostic experiences are those that feel magic and seamless. Think of that time you watched Netflix on the train, got home turned on your TV and right away you can pick up where you left off.
Some of the leading digital services, apps and products are now not just “Apps” or “Websites”, they are everywhere! Spotify is no longer an app, and in fact, it first started as a Windows and Mac desktop software. But now it’s on everything from your Playstation to your Alexa and everything in between.
So today we have a lot to consider to have a slick device-agnostic experience. A great place to start is to think of the advantages and weaknesses of each devices screen space, input method, hardware features and operating system interfaces.
For screens, we need to consider anything from a small watch screen, up to a 5k 50 inch TV. Input methods vary widely too — UX designers now have to cater for touch screen interfaces, TV remotes, voice-controlled speakers and classic mouse and keyboards.
2. Wearable UX
Smartwatches grew 54.3% in 2018, and accounted for 29.8% of all wearables. Apple Watches accounted for nearly half that market. Whats more, wearable technology is no longer reserved just for the well-being and fitness sector but is infiltrating several different industries including hotel chains, healthcare and defence. As users continue to adopt wearable technologies, designers must consider the most appropriate UX and UI for this context. This will vary greatly, depending on the type of wearable product it is and the purpose of the wearable device. Wearables are the connecting point between the digital, physical, medical and mobile world and increasingly play an essential role in people’s everyday life. Designers need to determine the most appropriate way to connect these two elements.
3. Voice First UI
Voice recognition is now a prominent feature across many devices, but let’s be honest we are demanding more than egg timers and trivial questions and answers. Consumer trends show an increasing desire for more human-like characteristics incorporated into their devices, expecting it to be more personal, adaptable and naturalistic. Advanced voice recognition is expected to become a growing trend, with the ability to ask increasingly complex and personal questions and in turn, receive poignant insights instantly.
4. Emotional Design
Thanks to smartphones and the development of apps such as Instagram and Twitter, individuals are exposed to endless amounts of information which they are forced to acknowledge or disregard at an alarming rate. With so much information available to individuals, it has become increasingly challenging for businesses to be heard through all the noise and communicate effectively to consumers. Bear in mind that like many industries digital design is subject to trends, adaptation and plain copying — therefore emotions can become a valuable domain to own and wield in your user experience.
Top Tip: When designing your UX one place to start and reference is Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions — this may help you deliver better experiences to your users when designing products.
Emotional UX design is one of the ways companies can burst through the noise of information and communicate effectively with their consumers. Emotional design strives to create products that elicit strong emotions to create a positive experience for the user. To do this, the designer must consider the most appropriate UX/UI design for the user to ensure that it creates positive emotions and creates a stand out and memorable experience for the individual.
5. Motion UI Design
User’s now consider motion and interaction an integral part of their online journey. As consumer behavior continues to shift towards enhanced experiences, animation and motion provide a valuable resource in enriching the online customer journey. Animation and motion give the user a perception of real-life and depth to a website or app as if they are interacting with a physical object. They also prove a valuable tool to help declutter interfaces, enabling content-heavy sites to achieve sleek finishes by using motion to guide the user to otherwise valuable hidden sections.
Designers are now incorporating animation and motion into the user interface and user experience as a way to draw the user into the website and engage with them more intuitively. However, animation and motion are not just visual attractions for the user; they also open up a previously static experience.
For more thoughts and examples of Motion UX, take a read of our Article on the subject here.
