What UI/UX Trends To Look Out For In 2017

What makes you stick to an app or website? Features? Colorful background? Easy navigation? Well, whatever that hooks you to the smartscreen is ‘user experience’.

And that’s why designers from all over the world have a lot to say about an engaging user experience and interaction. They have to produce more than just simple screens. They need to add gamifications, smooth transitions, color effects, font customization and more to create an amazing design experience.

Design is an open space to play around and hence the key to a successful UI/UX is to experiment with one’s imaginations. Trends are always changing and if you are in designing, you need to sync with the latest technological practices. Let’s check out the best UI/UX trends in 2017:

1. Why Age Responsive Designs Are Trending

A 7 year kid and a 70 year old will have different perspective to life. So why will they share the same user experience?

Age responsive designs and contents are going to rule this year. But why responsiveness? Well, it’s all about adaptability. You have to revamp your design as well as content placement with respect to the device user. Just as websites are reformatting their layout to fit different screen and wide variety of devices, they need to adapt required changes to fit wide range of user age as well. So, tailor design to fit specific age interests. Here a hint of how to do it:

• Whether it is about font size or button spacing, it must increase or decrease to fit different eyesights.
• You can change color schemes- saturated hues for young users and muted for older users.
• Play with the navigation menus- make them easier to interact for both age groups.

2. It’s No More About Simplicity In Designs

Poor designs is what people ask for. Masterpieces are the ones that deliver UX that people need! (block quote)

Nevertheless, the year 2016 saw a great influx of extremely simplified linear designs. It was a time when step by step navigation, narrowed menu buttons and fixed linear action path was followed. But users no more want to be pushed from one screen to another like herding cattle. 2017 demands more intelligence. In short, de-linearity is one of the best UI/UX trends in 2017.

You need to bring more interactive UX with a human touch. Users must have better paths for navigation.

3. Users Are Passively Engaging In Micro-Mini Interactions

The abuzz of micro-interaction is now an old story. It 2017, and users are more interested to engage in micro-mini interactions. Every time you open Linkedin or Snapchat, you subconsciously do many interactions- some visible and some you too small to notice. Take for example when you like a picture in Instagram, the heart changes in color to let you know about your action. Now that micro interaction.

Talking about micro-mini interactions, we continuously engage in microscopic actions every time we are using your phone. And that includes connecting tapping the ‘connect’ button on someone’s Linkedin profile or increasing volume by swiping to the right.

We created Barnoparichay, an award-winning language learning app that became a massive hit. Secret behind this success? Well, it was all about an interactive, intuitive and playful User interface. The app replicated the old school slate-pencil learning and it was loved by kids. It engaged kids with numerous life-like interactions to learn and play at the same time.

So, it’s about passively engaging users to do interactions within interactions.

4. A Mobile-First Approach

Noam Alloush, one of the top UX expert, who also founded SITE123 predicts that mobile first approach is going to rule even in the best UI/UX trends in 2017. He says that most desktop websites are going to look like apps. This trend was started by Google, where they removed the ads section from the right menu.

But why is that important?

Well, by the end of 2017, almost half of the world’s population will be online. And there is going to be a disproportionate influx of novice device users all over the world. So, there is a desperate need to offers users similar interfaces where they don’t require learning something new every time to log on. So, even the desktop versions are about to give users an UX similar to mobile.

5. Craze Over Chatbots Personalization

One of the biggest UX trends burning hot right now is over Chatbots- an interface that interacts with users like human. Bots have been around and they have overwhelmed users all around the world. But they are currently trending because of the Artificial Intelligence like Siri and Google Assistant is going beyond fad. They are actually useful and casting a positive impact on the users.

A survey revealed that we end up using only 5 apps among different option in our smartphone. And that includes one messaging app! So even businesses are looking up to capitalize messaging apps like Facebook and Skype.

So it’s quite predictive that chatbots has the potential in 2017. And they will solve our problems in a whisk.

Wrapping It Up

Trends in UI/UX are ever changing but the one thing that stays constant is a seamless user connect. So gear up and look out for the best ways you can integrate these trends in your app designing. If you are looking out for a well-curated service, check the portfolio of an award winning web and mobile apps development company.

ABOUT SWARNENDU

Swarnendu De is the Co-founder of Innofied, a specialized Mobile apps, Web apps, and Game development company. He manages the technical operations and leads the design and development teams there. He is the author of an advanced JavaScript book: Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices.

Swarnendu is also the Technical Director of Crossindia Adventure Tourismand he leads the IT and Digital Marketing operations of the company. He regularly writes at his personal blog, company blog, LinkedIn and the Tuts+network. Swarnendu lives in Kolkata — the city of joy. He loves travelling,photography & fishing.

Follow him at Twitter at @swarnendude.