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With Google’s release of it’s own version of Flat UI Trend – Material Design; its a perfect time to deep dive UX design trends which are getting hotter in 2015:
1. Material Design
In 2014, Google introduced Material Design which is a new kind of ‘Flat’ design. In the preceding months, only Microsoft and Apple were promoting the flat design concept but finally with the release of material design, Google has made it clear – flat design is in. If you have ever used any of Google’s apps, or Android 5.0 itself, you should be familiar with the look and feel of Material Design.
2. Card Style Layouts
The “Card” style layout has emerged as a great way to organize huge amounts of content without any hassle. From popular ecommerce to news sites, card-like content boxes are now being used on a relatively large scale. In my opinion, card design can be summarized in three words: simple, clean and versatile.
3. Parallax Scrolling
Parallax Scrolling was one of the hottest and most impressive UX design trends in 2014 and it looks to be more popular in 2015 although some might disagree with that. With the torrid growth in internet access from mobile devices, the act of clicking is slowly becoming extinct. Strictly speaking, today’s user finds scrolling much easier than clicking.
4. Meaningful Micro Interactions
If you love something – an appliance in your house, a wearable, a great app on your phone, or whatever – it is often because of the micro interactions you have with it. Micro-interactions are contained moments within a product, which revolve around a single task such as setting an alarm, deleting an email and syncing your device.
Though micro interactions are near-invisible due to their small size, if done well, they can play a vital role in dramatically increasing the user experience. As the web is becoming more complex by the day, users expect your UI to be built around simple, effective and tiny micro interactions.
5. Responsive Web Design
As the usage of mobile devices grows exponentially, there is no doubt responsive design will continue to establish itself as an indispensable technique for designing websites in 2015. As a designer you will not only need to focus on what that content is but also how it is being delivered to users. 2015 is the year in which user experience would be about providing great responsive experiences.
6. Bigger Emphasis on Typography
Just like content is the king, typography is the queen for your website. Gone are the days when you were required to shell out hundreds of dollars just to make the text of your tagline look good. Web font services like Google Fonts and Typekitare now offering a wide range of high-quality font sets at reasonable prices.
7. Content-focused Design
2015 will be the year of content-first website design. The way users consume your content, irrespective of the device being used, is an important factor must be taken into consideration while designing websites this year. Forget about lots of dynamic menus, heavy graphics or the “12pt” font size. These are all are things of the past. Now is the time to start designing websites with the core focus being in making them more readable, accessible and usable.
8. Use of Icons over Text
We have all heard of the saying: “a picture is worth a thousand words” …so is an icon. Over the last year, designers are taking advantage of icons for making websites more lightweight and attractive. However, icons are also being used in many other forms such as Infographics, sprite sheets and apps.
9. Demand for Native Apps
With the explosive growth in the sales and usage of mobile and tablet devices, 2015 will see a huge demand for native applications. Researchers say users find themselves more comfortable with native apps rather than accessing mobile optimized sites via mobile browser. Features like push notifications, reminders and offline functionality make an app more successful than a mobile-friendly/responsive site.
10. Emphasize on Prototyping
It has become iminently important for all app based business ranging from app based businesses to application development companies to create rapid prototypes in order to produce and validate user experience. They add a great value to set up the expectation from dev team in minimal efforts. From Introduction of Rapid Prototyping in 2011, where it was more of a good-to-have part of process, in less than 3 years it has become a must-to-do.
Recently, companies like InvisionApp, Flinto and CanvasFlip are doing great job to create and share prototypes in minutes. CanvasFlip allows users to create Layers based prototyping which means more realistic prototype designs.
(Article inspired by Usability Geek)
About CanvasFlip
CanvasFlip.com is the fastest prototyping platform to convert your static screens into interactive prototype in minutes. It offers Layers Based Prototyping which creates more realistic design prototypes in lesser efforts. One of the best feature in CanvasFlip is – Automatic Screen Flow. When you connect screens, a smart algorithm generates hierarchical view of connected screens like a SiteMap.