Our technological environment will always influence the trends of the upcoming year. With that in mind, the start of a new year provides excellent occasions to look at the emerging trends that will continue to grow in popularity.
What’s more in the design industry, what’s truly useful (or not) and what is falling out of favor, is essential for UX and UI designers who want to be able to provide their users groundbreaking ideas and experiences.
Evaluating trends and looking at how they might evolve a few years from now is important to that endeavor. Based on our research and observations, we’ve gathered some of the most interesting UI/UX design trends that you should watch in 2020 ramotion and other major agencies won’t miss them.
Split Screen and Asymmetry
We can’t just give up to the classic block layout. It provides a much digestive flow of information when the concepts are complex and have to contain well-defined boundaries. It brings so much sense of completion and just helps us comprehend the structure better. In other words, the block layout is symmetry. With that mind, there’s an asymmetrical trend that has always been there but never succeeded it to the mainstream world. Especially today when increasingly more people are falling for wide desktop screens.
However, 2020 seems to be the perfect time for asymmetry to make another comeback. Why? More and more people deal with multiple tools all fighting for the screen estate, making people feel more comfortable with the split-screen mode. And, what was originally a necessary approach to look at two distinct information blocks in one screen now becomes a visually pleasing way to display any kind of material just because.
Immersive 3D Elements
3D design elements have fascinated us for many years. And, as we can see, the popularity of these trends is going to upsurge as AR and VR technologies gain momentum now. When it comes to bespoke web design, it makes a lot of sense to combine these methods to build hyper-realistic 3D visuals occupying the whole user’s display.
Immersive 3D elements allow UX and UI designers and businesses to beautify their websites. Doing so, they encourage potential customers to stay longer on the page and double the average session time. Innovative visuals are tremendously attractive to users. They transcend boundaries between reality and virtual space. One important element for an effective 3D graphics implementation is the increased performance of the website UI. If the platform is not well-optimized and fast-loading, it will not easily support the heaviness of 3D graphics. In turn, the website may provide users with low response time, lags and so on.
Animations and Illustrations
Illustrations have been around digital products for a long time, and their evaluation in the last years is massive. How illustrations managed to mark their way in the UX/UI design? Being a very popular design element, illustrations can add a natural feel and “human touch” to the overall UX of our products.
As you’ve probably noticed, illustrations can be very strong attention grabbers. By adding motion, extra details and personality to their illustrations designers bring their products to life in no time.
As for the animations, there is a false impression that complex animations are hardware-dependent in such a way that makes no sense to produce them for a mass run by slow processors. It turns out that some products are capable of exceeding industry standards written for sluggish hardware without relying on hardware producers. For most brands, services and products in 2020, both animations and illustrations can be effective ways to tell a story.
Futuristic colour combinations
2020 web design is all about bright and noisy colours. Colours that might not seem to go well together seem to harmonize with each other catching the user’s eye due to their uniqueness. This trend suits perfectly to minimalistic websites with a limited number of colours as their bright combinations of colours will definitely stick in the memory.
To succeed in this trend, brands should not be afraid of trying what’s new. Neon glowing shades and noisy combination with large fonts should not miss.
Voice interactions
Voice interactions have already departed the realm of science fiction. Mobile apps, as well as smartphones, changed that, making voice interaction not only conceivable but mainstream. Allowing individuals to freely interact with mobile apps via voice commands established a new path of possibilities for interaction with a product. When users can give voice commands, they can use mobile apps in situations where touch interfaces are practical or safe, like following a tutorial or driving.
Voice interaction trend isn’t that new, but previous iterations didn’t work well as they were too clunky. Recently, voice interaction has grown thanks to AI-assistance, which allowed for more practical communication with an app. And, since it will continue to improve, the voice interaction trend isn’t likely to go away. Additionally, Google has announced considerable upgrades to its well-known Google Voice Assistant feature that some speculate could be the beginning of voice interaction substituting touch interaction almost entirely.
Dark Mode On
Although dark mode isn’t that fresh either, it’s likely to become a classic this year. For instance, companies like Apple did a lot to support the trend along when they announced their Mojave with the ability to automatically switch to a dark theme in apps that support it. What’s more, Apple released an update for its iOS that provides the exact functionality.
It’s suggested that dark UI themes will continue to expand in 2020. Besides the visuals appeal that dark mode provides – for some people, dark mode comes with the proper contrast that can alleviate eye strain.
Gmail is the latest significant app to get dark mode – they started rolling out the option back in September, and the results were amazing. Now that all three tech giants – Google, Apple, and even Facebook’s mobile app, have adopted dark mode, this trend is likely to survive long time to come.
For businesses out there looking to beautify their brands – need to succeed in creating a unique but still engaging user interface with a combination of several tendencies.