As said by Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like, it’s about how it works.”
As a UI UX designer, you must ensure that their experience is as good as it can possibly be. A website or UI/UX design is not just a group of pages connected by links. It’s a space where so many things happen. People interact with your digital presence and user interface elements. This interaction with the elements shapes the experience for the visitor. As a web designer, you must ensure that their experience is as good as it can possibly be. To be able to do that, throughout the UI UX design process, you should keep in mind the needs and comfort of your user first, foremost, and always.
In this article, we have listed down 5 UX UI design trends, tips and tricks for all web designers. But first, let’s be clear about the difference between UI and UX design.
Back in the day, online software or product developers were simply known as web designers. Now that the design industry has augmented, specific terms of UX and UI have become common and so has their distinction.
The User Interface (UI) refers to the visual elements through which people interact with a website, while the User Experience (UX) is about the experience a user has with a website. So, UI includes visual interface elements like typography, colors, tabs, menu, and more, while UX focuses on the usability of the visitor.
UX is the foundation so you need to establish that first. Decide the flow of actions and put the fundamental elements in place and then define the visual details.
Given below are 5 creative UI design trends and tips to help you improve your designs:
Personalization is a designing approach where you can create specific content and recommendations for each of your users based on the information they share. Like, their birth date, marital status, viewing and order history, etc. The personalized design will make your users feel that the content is created especially for them. This can help you to increase the conversation rate. Personalization today is not just about the user experience, it has become a trend and is highly practiced.
Many people don’t realize it, but AI plays a big part in UX. Consider the personalized music suggestions on Spotify, Youtube home feed or Netflix recommendations. Making the interface more personal to your users by generating content that is relevant and related to their preferences will be a boon.
Source: Netflix Technology Blog
Another trend that became popular very fast is these touchless interactions and gestures. It was made clear back in 2019 that voice user interaction is going to be one of the major trends in the coming years. People got attracted to the air gesture controls and VUI (voice user interface) pretty fast. It’s not only helpful in expanding your design reach but also convenient for visitors to navigate. You can use voice chat bots when someone visits your website for the first time. It can walk them through the necessary functions and sections using voice commands.
If we talk about the air gesture controls, this technique took the gesture control mechanism to a whole new level. You can now make things work on your device with mere movements in the air.
There’s no doubt that 3D designs look more attractive and interactive. 3D designs have been around for a while now and the designers’ interest in them doesn’t seem to go away.
Earlier, 3D components were not in practical use because of the heavy load they put on user machines, decreasing their demand. Today, modern front-end frameworks are able to reduce the page load time, allowing the 3D objects to appear more detailed and larger. This has increased its popularity and demand in 2021 significantly. Using 3D objects and interfaces can make your website appealing and make the visitors stay on the page for a longer time.
Source: Zoox
If you were to choose from any motion effect, a static image, or plain text to tell your brand story, what would you choose? It’s only natural that most people would choose motion effects. No static or plain text can tell a brand story better than a motion effect. Using motion effects, you can add a relaxing element to the most serious areas of your website. It can also help you make it easier and fun for the user to process a lot of serious professional information. For example, you can use creative motion elements for scrolling or tie them to the cursor. Also, like many apps nowadays, you can give the pull to refresh animation making it entertaining and engaging for your users.
Check out the amazing motion effects on the website of Easygreen.
In the world of advanced UI UX design, there’s no more such thing as conventional layouts. Now is the time for unorthodox layouts, typography, colors, scroll and unique designs. Many UX design agency have been experimenting with out-of-the-box website layouts and elements to stand out among typical traditional websites.
Check out the unique layout design of this interactive graphic novel website - The Boat.
You can try using new UX design for websites, like interesting and unusual creative navigation techniques. For example, color fade on scroll, scroll-triggered animation, drag to explore, etc.
You don’t have to shy away from unique UI designs with neon colors, retro fonts, and aesthetic elements to make you stand out among your competitors.
After all the above-mentioned trends, it can be said that UI design trends in 2021 are a mix of animations, transitions, unique colors, unorthodox scrolling elements and out-of-the-box layouts. In the end, we highlight one more trend that is not going out of fashion anytime i.e. critical thinking and relevance of design. Being a web designer, you must keep up with the trends in the industry and uniquely present them with a logic and development perspective of your own.
Anuja is the Co-founder and CEO of RedAlkemi Online Pvt. Ltd., a digital marketing agency helping clients with their end to end online presence. Anuja has 30 years of work experience as a successful entrepreneur and has co-founded several ventures since 1986. She and her team are passionate about helping SMEs achieve measurable online success for their business. Anuja holds a Bachelors degree in Advertising from the Government College of Fine Arts, Chandigarh, India.