9 UX Trends for the End of 2019

Today, we invite you to take a quick look at 9 trends that directly or indirectly impact UX design.

Introduction

User experience and user-centered design have become an essential success factor for businesses. Involving the end user to design solutions that meet their needs is crucial to stand out from the competition and offer a product that will be adopted by users. For example, Snapchat lost over 3 million users when they redesigned their app without considering user input.

But that’s not all—technology, user expectations, research… All these elements evolve quickly, and it is important for UX Designers and companies to adapt!

This is why we are offering you today a quick overview of the field, through 9 trends.

1) Search no more!

What could be better than having tailor-made content based on your needs, wants, and motivations? With interface personalization, this is now possible! Today, major companies like Netflix and Spotify provide interfaces customized to our tastes.

Users have higher and higher expectations for the services offered to them. So how do you stand out from the rest? Personalization can be a good way to achieve this since it shows the user that you care about them and understand their needs. This contributes to a good user experience and encourages users to come back.

2) Guardians of user data

Facebook scandals, Google recording your every move and location, smart speakers saving your requests on their servers—it’s not very reassuring, is it?

Data protection and respect for privacy have become major concerns, as shown by the arrival of GDPR in 2018. UX Designers have every reason to take this aspect into account to establish a relationship of trust with users. For example, it is essential that the user has visible and clear information informing them about data collection (using cookie banners, for example).

3) The web for everyone

Another still relevant topic concerns the accessibility of web content. The thought process and creation must take into account making content accessible to all types of users. For people with visual impairments, for example, image descriptions are essential. Instagram understood this well by implementing alternative text to provide access to their app for the visually impaired.

But accessibility also concerns all other users. Everyone should be able to use your site, no matter their equipment, network infrastructure, native language, culture, or geographic location. Designers must, therefore, be more demanding in their design process to offer all users an accessible design.

4) The Shakespeares of the web

UX-related jobs continue to grow! After UX Designer, UX Researcher, here is the most recent role from the United States: the UX Writer!
User experience is a complex concept, but it is present in everything around us (canceled trains without notice is a bad UX). So it makes sense that professionals in the field are specializing more and more. The latest of these specializations is the UX Writer.

You’re probably wondering what that is?

Well, it’s simply a specialist in writing.

Like a journalist?

Yes and no—the difference is that this professional integrates UX methods into their work. They reach out to the company/brand that hires them, but also to their users to try to understand their needs. They then try to align the company’s goals with user needs through the words they choose.

The art of finding the right words and crafting the right message delivers a better user experience. No wonder groups like Google and Amazon have already started creating special positions for UX Writers.

5) Once upon a time…

The choice of words is important—but so is how you tell the story! The new trend is storytelling.

We all remember a story we heard as children. Storytelling is based on the same principle. By following a storyline, users can identify with your brand and products. The goal is to create in users “an emotion that matches the product.” Storytelling requires a lot of empathy as well as a deep understanding of users’ motivations and inspirations, which is precisely the specialty of a good UX Designer.

6) The battle of the buttons

With the iPhone X, Apple surprised everyone by releasing a phone without a main button. This revolution could well develop with technologies that rely solely on gesture-based control. Gone are the days of tapping an arrow on the screen to move to the next video. Users will have to get used to controlling interfaces with precise gestures (swiping down, up, from the bottom corner, holding long or short, etc.).

This is a risky bet—if users can’t find or perform a command, their whole experience with the product suffers. The challenge will be to design intuitive interactions by anticipating user actions based on their needs.

7) Ever greater immersion

Increasingly, new technologies are offering users immersive experiences. This is true for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), which UX Designers will now have to incorporate into their work.

When it comes to AR, it is taking on a larger and larger role in the technologies being used today. This increasing use of AR is prompting many designers to find ways to make this technology an integral part of applications. The challenge will be to put augmented reality at the service of the user experience.

The second technology is VR (Virtual Reality). This goes even further by offering complete immersion for the user. VR can be used to meet needs in many areas, such as culture (with the ability to view destroyed or damaged monuments) or real estate (for virtual property tours or viewing buildings under construction). The UX challenges are numerous: “preventing motion sickness, encouraging immersion, ensuring safety, identifying biases, and facilitating navigation.”

8) “Alexa, tell me the UX trends for the end of the year”

No more excuses for forgetting to add a product to your shopping list—now you just have to ask your voice assistant to do it for you! The arrival of Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa has already caused a daily revolution in many households. These interfaces were designed to make our lives easier: searching for information, checking the weather, making a shopping list… No wonder then that ComScore* predicts that by 2020, 50% of searches will be voice-based.

For Designers, this means creating technologies that are ever more useful to users. Adobe has already risen to the challenge, offering “Voice prototyping” in Adobe XD. This innovation allows designers to create and test their solutions by integrating voice interactions. Worth a try…

9) The end of the personal computer?

Just walk down the street or look at people on the subway—you’ll see that mobile browsing is now part of everyday life (so much so that phones have surpassed computers in usage)! The conversion rate on these devices is also constantly rising—users now happily shop from their phones. Finally, you also have to consider the new ways people use these devices (buttonless phones, foldable screens, etc.).

Using mobile isn’t the only trend to watch—there’s also been an explosion in connected objects. For now, many of these gadgets seem gimmicky, but they are destined to become genuinely useful (smartwatches measuring glucose for diabetics, for example).

The era of computer supremacy seems over, and a “mobile-first” approach is now more essential than ever. Other devices, however, should not be neglected. For UX Designers, this means design should be thought of in terms of the overall user journey rather than the device being used. The user might start interacting on a connected device or a voice assistant and complete their actions on their phone, for example.

Bonus: The end of a headache

Passwords can fast become a source of frustration! Who hasn’t wasted lots of time picking a password that’s both easy to remember, but hard to guess and meets system requirements (uppercase, lowercase, 2 digits, etc.)?

Once you get past that, you might think the hardest part is over, but it’s not! We end up with a staggering amount of passwords (all different for greater security), but when it’s time to enter the right one, you can’t find it!

According to some studies, 37% of users have to reset a password at least once a month! New technologies could, in the near future, relieve us of this headache by simply making passwords disappear. This could take the form of biometric authentication, facial recognition (which Apple has implemented on its latest phones), or even a “magic link” like on Slack or Medium. We’re also seeing the arrival of the WebAuthn authentication API, which allows websites to access authentication systems installed or connected to a device. The end of passwords is near!

A forgotten trend?

Do you know of a trend that hasn’t been mentioned and want to share it? Don’t hesitate to let us know by leaving a comment!

Conclusion

To conclude, mobile design will remain a major issue for the end of the year. Beyond that, the UX Designer must also adapt to various changes and take a broader role in the design process. The challenge will be to anticipate the right user journey based on new technologies (AR, VR, voice interfaces, connected objects…), keeping new trends in mind (personalization, storytelling, UX Writing), while protecting user data and making content accessible to all.

In any case, adaptation must always keep one thing in mind that makes the UX Designer indispensable: listening to users. You can build the most beautiful, simplest interface, but if it is designed without considering the real needs of your users and without being tested, it is doomed to failure.

For the end of 2019, listen, think, design for and with your users. To meet this challenge, don’t hesitate to contact us to get support in realizing and achieving your project.

Sources:

Alexandre Pons – UX Designer