New trends in user interface design have been changing the face of the internet for decades. 2016 had featured a number of innovative ideas in this field. The most prominent innovation was probably the Pokémon Go application which blurred users' dichotomy between reality and its virtual counterpart. Now that this possibility has become available, the importance of screen-interaction has greatly increased.
In 2017, designers created easily navigated, personally customized designs (thus saving users' time) while emphasizing more detailed indicators.
This leads us to 2018. What can we expect in terms of user interface design?
Content- the demand for more written content has led to scrollable internet pages. This is good news for search engine optimization, yet serves as a unique challenge for user interface designers. This matter will probably keep designers quite busy in 2018.
Video- it is true that words can lead to more richly detailed stories, but the advantage of video is that it allows telling an effective story without requiring the worker to scroll or read. Full-screen videos cause users to become more involved as well as lead to better ratings for the website.
Typography- whether websites rely on long texts or start off with picture/video, typography will be central in 2018.
Gradients- 2018 may possibly be user interface designers' dream-year. We will see an increased use of bright, morel vivid colors and an amplified use of gradients.
Navigation- designing simple navigation is a goal all designers share. Simple navigation means an easy and linear navigation with an emphasis on touching, pressing or moving. Voice-recognition techniques are on a rise as well, since they do not require a menu (a fact that will obviously alter the basic method of digital navigation). Website owners must learn of voice search's effects on digital marketing.
Illustrations- illustration as feature depends much on its purpose; illustrations can be sophisticated or basic, serious or humorous. They can even be animated. Using them can generate unique experiences for site visitors. This trend is predicted to be very relevant in 2018.
Tabs- tabs (tiles/squares in various sites) are expected to become more popular in 2018. Tabs are a great solution for small screens and are also an efficient way to share lots of data on small space. Thanks to their mobile design being user friendly, this trend isn't going anywhere.
No rules- towards the end of 2016, a large number of internet websites have started to think out of the box regarding their design, a trend expected to gain force in 2018.
Who, in fact, actually needs a user interface? Andy Budd, CEO of digital agency Clearleft foresees lesser use of manual user interfaces and an increase in voice-based user interfaces.
The need for more cooperation- as personal customization gains dominance thus creating more varied possibilities, cooperation between creative, marketing and development personnel might become more relevant than ever. Long content requires talented writers while illustrations and customized typography depend on talented designers. The demand for more measurements calls for marketing to be more involved in website construction.
In conclusion, it can be said that 2018 may hold plenty of innovations in the realm of UI. Fields such as voice search will serve as a quantum leap that may possibly totally alter the concept of user interface. An extensive use of full-screen video content (as a follow-up to recent years' video incorporation trend) will lead to increased site usability. It is my personal opinion that long content will probably not generate such usability (unlike video content). We will have to wait and see whether the trends described above indeed affect user interface design in 2018.
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