#9 UX Trends for 2021
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Hello and welcome to the future of UX podcast. I can't believe it, but we are back with brand new episodes for Spanish 21, everything around design, the future and user experience design.

So 2020 has been quite a challenging year I think for most of us, which makes me really excited that we are starting a new year and it's always good to look back on what happened the last year and come up with trends.

And this is what I want to do in this episode. I want to share my top 10 trends for 2021 when it comes to user experience design. So what are the big UX trends we as designers need to keep an eye on? And before I'm starting, I want to say that I also created a YouTube video about the topic where I'm sharing...

a lot of like a visual design example so make sure to check that out also i always forget to say that but please share the episode on instagram or to your friends if this is helpful for you and also don't forget to rate us on itunes right this is super helpful for us and

I really love to connect, so feel free to say hi, write me feedback. Let's connect on Instagram. You can find me at ux.patricia or futureofuxpodcast. We also have our own Instagram account now. I would say don't lose more time and let's get started. I want to start with the first question.

The first big trend which are super apps. So how are we using apps right now? Most of the times we have one app, one purpose.

So what are super apps now? Super apps have multi purposes. So they are combining different purposes, different tasks in one app. So they can do many things and their goal is actually to solve many different user needs in one app so the user does not need to switch to another app. So this is a really interesting approach here.

The design or the idea actually comes from Asia. So the most popular example probably is WeChat. We also have Alipay with 1 billion users each day and they combine a messenger and social media and payment and like food ordering and booking systems. They're still kind of uncommon in Europe and the US, so in the Western cultures. But this will change soon, right? Because convenience always wins.

And there are some approaches from the US starting, for example, Natural AI. This is a super interesting app which integrates different purposes, shopping, food delivery and also like some other services. And this app really helps to, I would say, like declutter the chaos of apps.

because you only see what you want and what you need but you have a lot of functions combined in one app. So really interesting, make sure to check that out. So what does this mean for UX, for user experience design? I would say of course it's always very important to have a really good discoverability in apps, so a really good navigation system, the more functions, the harder it is for the user to find what they really need.

And many people have problems with a lot of functions, so we need to keep an eye on discoverability, really present what the user really needs.

Also keep an eye on the whole structure of SuperApps because this is a really interesting thing and will probably change the way how we are using apps right now. And in 10 years you might look back and will laugh about all the different apps we had on our phones, right? Like the average user has 80 apps or so on their phone.

and you always need to look for them. We're using like five to eight on a daily base and the rest is something we just use here and there but we still have them. So this might change when we just think back about

I think like this decade or like the last decade was definitely the decade of the platforms, right? So the different, we had different websites. If we look for example at Amazon or Google or also booking.com, then...

they are combining different information and before or if we don't use them so if we don't use their platform where they're combining everything also uber right

Then we need to check several websites with their single information. And the combination of this whole content is really helpful for us, right? Thinking about looking for a hotel, you don't need to go or to check 20 websites. You have everything combined in one on booking.com, for example. So this might be the same with apps and super apps. So we definitely need to keep an eye on this amazing trend.

Okay, so let's have a look on trend number two, which is remote video interactions. I think if we can say one thing about 2020, then the pandemic definitely changed the way we work and we communicate and we play.

So the whole remote thing definitely had a huge influence on us in the long term, right? Like Zoom was super successful, video communication was super successful. And although 2021 will be the year where we finally have a vaccine and we can go back to normal, we need to ask ourselves what "back to normal" really means.

And in the end, I think we probably won't really go back to normal, right? Because so many things have changed already and a lot of companies have moved to remote work and remote workshops and they actually realized that

This is working out quite well and they can save a lot of money not traveling somewhere and that they get the information they need and the whole collaboration thing actually works out and you don't really need to sacrifice efficiency at least you know when I'm talking about like design teams or digital teams.

And the second thing is that a lot of services moved online, right? So not only collaboration and working together as a team, so the whole work environment, but also everything that happens around that. So shopping, for example, you know, we had a virtual catwalk experience, a lot of events moved online.

Because this was the only solution, right? And also the safest for most of us. So we will probably see a lot of video content, live events, something like that. So on demand, not on demand, live events integrated in our services.

that might be in the medical industry, you know like virtual doctor appointment or also shopping. So a lot of like consultancy work I would say, where you need some kind of information but you don't really want to go somewhere and it's much more convenient to have a call at your home asking something or also watching videos on demand. So kind of tutorial stylish but

not that long. And this also includes the AR/VR trend, I would say. So the pandemic really helped people to understand that also these new technologies are not only for games and stuff but can really help us for like collaboration and for the whole video communication thing because right now it's still there's still some room for improvement.

But for us as designers, it also means rethinking the way how we communicate with our users. So this can also be right that we are integrating on demand video interactive content in our services. So people get the information right away before they're really going to a physical store. Okay, so point number three is everything around personalization.

And this is a trend I think which comes up almost every year and it gets more important every year because with the advantages of AI, with artificial intelligence,

They are new ways to really personalize content for the user. And this is a really exciting thing for us as designers, right? Because our goal is here to really provide individual content and recommendations for the user based on their needs and also on the provided information we are having, right? So like, I don't know, like the data we have from them, how they use the service, for example.

And personalization can mean different things. I think on the one side, it can mean we personalizing interfaces and like the service around them based on what they need, what kind of services they need more often, what kind of functions they need more often, which makes me really excited. And the second part is everything around content. So really personalizing content recommendations based on their needs.

And I think what's really important to understand here is that a lot of companies are already doing that like super well, right? Like if we have a look on Amazon or also Netflix,

And I think Netflix does that super well. I think most of us have probably realized that or read articles about that because Netflix really also personalizes the video images. So the trailer images based on our needs. So for example, if I'm more in the... If I really like thrillers, then my Stranger Things...

image would look a little bit more like a thriller and if you like more like the romantic comedy style then for you you would see something different. So they really adjust the trailers on the the movies on the series you're watching and try to personalize that what I find really interesting and

shows us that not only like AI can mean different things and that we need to integrate that in our design process at some point. And we think that, right? So thinking about how does a user flow might look like with different options here. So how do we differentiate the different areas here, the different options and yeah, think that in our design process and

make really make sure that we can integrate AI when we need that. But I think a personalization always comes with some doubts, I would say. So the ethical part is very important because, you know, AI only works with data. So the more data you have, the better gets your AI. Pretty simple.

But using data always comes with challenges, so right, like thinking about biases, using the right data and make sure that the AI really analyzes the data correctly and that we provide the best experience for the user and not only manipulate them in the wrong way. Here, like the ethical part I think is very very important for us in the next year.

So, point number four, and this is a very important part also, which got a lot of push, I would say, from the pandemic as well, because it's the trend of other in and outputs like voice or touch and gesture, those kind of things.

The pandemic also changed a little bit the perception of touching elements, right? Because there could be like bacterias or even the virus. So people are not always super happy to touch things, especially when it's not in their home.

So there are always new ways to interact with interfaces, with content. Touch is not the only way to really interact with content. We also can integrate voice interaction and also gestures. I think those two are very interesting. Voice is something we're talking about like for the last years already. This has always been a trend.

And there are still some challenges I would say, but it gets better and better and better. Also like thinking about like the smart assistants and the way you interact with the voice of the smart assistant gets better and learns every day by adding more data to it, by really analyzing the data and yeah, coming up with better solutions for us.

What does it mean for us? First of all, voice can be an add-on to your product. So you don't need to think about, okay, small assistance and this is something I either have or you don't have. This can be some kind of an add-on to your product. Another input way to really help a user to find something. If we think about Google, you can either speak or you can integrate or you can just type.

And the more input methods you have, the easier it is for the user to really decide what works best for them in this specific moment. The second thing is here the gesture control and this is definitely a little bit more difficult to integrate. They are not... Yeah, it's more difficult to really like track the movement right.

But there are a lot of areas where it really makes sense to integrate them. Thinking about all the areas where your eyes are busy and you can just move your hands based on like the things you need. You're thinking about driving, for example, or thinking about cooking, you know, when your hands are still free kind of or at least one hand, but you can't really touch a tiny screen somewhere, but you want to navigate.

so gesture is really interesting also you know apple integrated that and like a gesture control thing in their ipad so you can find that um in your ipad and play a little bit around with that

So my recommendation here is to really think about ways how input and output might be different. This is also something for the future. We won't use touch forever, so this will be different and there is a lot of time to experiment and this will be a really big trend for 2021. Okay, point number five, which is my favorite topic. It's augmented reality apps.

And this will be probably a trend for the next years because smart glasses are coming in 2021. At least this is what Facebook announced in September 2020. And Facebook is planning to launch their smart glasses. I am super, super, super excited about those glasses and can't wait to check them out. And I know that Facebook is working on...

AR glasses for a really long time. They have a really big team working on that. The same with Apple. Everything is like super secret. You don't hear much about that. Only a lot of rumors about different teams working on it and they're doing a lot of research and I can't wait to have the products out there. A consumer friendly product that we can use and we can play around with. This will be super interesting.

for us as designers. So we should definitely keep an eye on AR and also think about use cases, how we can rethink designs for the AR space. So trend number six is realism. So one of...

The amazing trends 2020 was the neomorphism. I think we all have heard about it. It's an interesting trend actually where you integrated 3D elements based on a wide background kind of, right? And it looked super

super beautiful. The problem was actually that it was paired with some usability problems, accessibility problems, right? Because you couldn't really differentiate between like foreground and background and different elements, what's selected, what doesn't. So you basically see a lot of like, like you would draw an

how do you say, like an interface on the snow for example. Like pushing a few things a little bit more down and then adding things. So it looked like a snow interface kind of. Yeah, yeah. And it ended up not having too many fans actually because of the usability problems. But it also shows that we are so hungry for something new, for a little bit more like

realistic, nature-styled and beautiful interface elements. We're using flat UI since, I don't know, for like 10 years or so. Their big hype was 2012. And I think we are looking for something new and something fresh and something maybe a little bit better. So what does this mean for us or for 2021? It actually means that

The whole experimenting with coming up with new styles, integrating 3D in different ways is something which really excites me a lot. Because this guides us in the future, you know, thinking about AR, VR, how interfaces might look like. And we are experimenting a lot also with like neomorphism.

But we are not quite there yet. So 2021 will be a year where we are experimenting a lot with realism, how interfaces might look like, integrating 3D elements in our interface, coming up with new fresh ideas.

we are not scared anymore to really experiment here and to start discussions, which was like the neomorphism, right? Like there were so many discussions online about that. So I'm looking forward to more discussions around that and a lot of like fresh ideas. So for us, it also means that we need to be a little bit careful that we don't overdo it and that we always keep an eye on accessibility.

So talking about neomorphism guides us to our next trend which is 3D graphics. So 3D is a huge trend for the next year, not only for like illustrations, for infographics, for almost everything. So 3D is like the big design trend for 2021.

But for us as UX designers, it's also interesting because for us, right, it's not only like decoration, but it can also serve functional purposes too. And this is what we can see on many websites, really integrating 3D rendered graphics on your website.

And this comes from all the hardware advantages which support 3D interaction with WebXR for example. So really amazing. Very helpful for educational purposes because they can show elements more realistically.

And we just talked about like all the video content and everything that moved like remotely, right? So it's super helpful for also e-commerce or everything where you need to see physical products in three dimensions on your digital screen, right? That you can really decide if that really fits to what you need, if you want to have that or if you want to, if you don't want to buy it.

And this 3D trend, of course, I think like the first part here is around like the graphics, the elements, the design part. And the second one is about the interfaces, education. So really thinking about how we can integrate 3D elements in our design. But there it's important to keep an eye on the optimization so that we really have enough

power that we optimize the whole design that it really works well on the website or on the product because if not then it will be laggy and super frustrating for the user so we need to make sure also as designers that we are I would say working with professionals who are able to really optimize the content to our needs and that we can use that like super fast so

Next trend, trend number seven I think already is motion and interactions. So with everything also like the three dimensional content, it's all about motion and interactions. We all are spending so much time in front of the screen and

A lot of things actually look the same and from like after a certain time, the user gets tired and it's important for us also to keep that in mind and make sure that we are really guiding the user and guiding their view and their gaze. So really help the user to guide the attention and

really focus on what is important and we can do that with motion and micro interactions. And this is what we are seeing more and more also in 2020, but 2021 will be the year where we are integrating a lot of micro interaction, where we finally have like the power and the hardware advantages to really support that. And there I think it's important to keep in mind that we are focusing on the areas that really need the attention

if it's 3D or not. And keep an eye on that. Motion is only helpful if it really supports the intention we're having for that product, for that website. So only integrating motion or interactions for, I don't know, interaction's sake is something which is not really helpful for the user, right? Because in the end, they might be confused and

We all know that where the interaction is happening, the user is also looking at. And we can use that now to really guide the user through the whole experience. So animation is like a lot. You need like a lot of...

It's like a bigger interaction, I would say. So micro-interactions are very interesting for all of us right now, especially in the new year, because we can animate or integrate micro-interactions in many different tiny ways, like status changes or also different reactions to pressing a button or a website loading visualization, everything which might be nice and also help the user to

look to the right areas and make the user smile. And this trend also comes from the advantages of software.

Because now there are so many great products, you know, thinking about like auto-animating Adobe XD or Principle is a little bit older, but also Framer and Webflow, where you as a designer, although you're not a motion designer or a developer, you can design those micro interactions super easily in like half an hour, depends on what you want to design. And this is changing right now with all the new products

like amazing software we as designers are using to integrate those micro-integers within our design. Talk to the developer and have a discussion about when and where to integrate that. Also test that super easily. Okay, point number eight is also I think very very interesting because I remember that this has been a pretty big discussion in the last years.

So I'm talking about the problem that all designs or most of the websites are starting to look a little bit the same, right? So I remember that at a certain point when we started with growth hacking and conversion rate optimization, a lot of testing, that clients were a little bit afraid, also design teams, to try something crazy.

Rather use something that is working super well and get like a super high conversion rate but don't confuse the user at some point.

And now we are at a point where a big part of popularity knows how to use the internet and the websites and apps and everything. And designers and also clients realize the importance of branding and about really standing out. Especially now where we are spending so much time online. So you really need to stand out. And this guides us to the new trend, which is unorthodox design decisions.

So what can this be? This can be for example a really interesting navigation through scrolling on a website. This can be interesting typography choices, different color combinations and maybe also an interesting navigation system on your website.

I am linking a few examples here to that episode, make sure to check out the YouTube video I uploaded, because this will be really helpful to check out a few examples which I find very exciting and interesting for us. So, designers are really hungry for something new and fresh and are happy to experiment.

Although, of course, right, it's important for us to keep in mind that we are not distracting the user and we will find that out through user testing if the user really finds what they need or if they're frustrated at some point. Because this is like a really small path, I would say, between creating something new and exciting and also not frustrating the user so that they definitely find what they need.

But branding is amazing and standing out is very important. But yeah, without confusing the user. So trend number nine is actually design responsibility. And this is something which I think became like so so so so obvious in the last year because of like the Black Lives Matter movement, right, or the election.

Also the pandemic, right? Like there was so many like information out there, a lot of like misinformation as well. So I think there were actually like two problems that kind of were carved out. The first was everything around social media, because on social media it's pretty easy to spread information, especially on Twitter, right? Like people retweet posts they haven't even read. This is a study I read, which I think is really interesting.

So Twitter introduced content analysis and they hide information that might be misleading. I think it's a really great way, like a really great step in the right direction. So everything around like misinformation online and providing information that is understandable for the user. Also with like the Black Lives Matter movement or also with the

election or the pandemic a lot of information was out there and what is right what is wrong what is like a misinformation what doesn't and this is something we need to figure out especially in the new year how can we share content and make sure that people understand that and that also we as designers who are designing like a software or a service

highlight information that isn't true, how can we fake check information or things that happen on the platforms we are designing. I guess it's a really important thing. And the second part is the ethical part here.

I think we are realizing that we really need to talk about ethics and Black Lives Matter really, I think, opened many people's eyes that we are not always choosing the best solutions, that we need to listen much, much more to people, that we need to integrate diverse user groups and be

like be really in the mood or also integrate research in a way that we really understand people and not only focus on specific target groups or specific areas like always like the old white man right so this is I think something that most designers

realized last year and this will definitely go on in the next year. Also there are a few really great examples and make sure to check them out in the YouTube video. And the last point is behavioral research. Research has always been a very very important part of every design process and in 2020

Like so many products moved online. So the UX, I would say like the, you know, like the UX industry was quite busy because we needed to do like so many things, work on new products, work on adjustments here and there. And because of all the new, how do you say, like advantages and all the new possibilities, the newer technologies, immersive tech, all the AR, VR stuff coming up.

we are coming up with a lot of questions and behavioral research is a great way to really answer those questions and don't always rely on the patterns you're using, but rethink specific design patterns for really better solutions.

Because 2020 really showed us that we don't only can rely on things we know, sometimes we need to rethink specific ways we're designing.

Especially I think like all the ethical parts and how we're using data, AI, what is really frustrating for the user and what does really help them and you know with all the social media addiction and all the growth hacking parts. So how can we create a future we all want to live in?

So behavioral research will be a very important part where we focus on behaviors, on needs and desires for the user. So those were the top 10 trends for 2021. And I think this will be a really exciting year for us. There were a lot of really interesting things happening. I'm excited to start a new year with a lot of new episodes and a lot of great content coming.

So thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate that. Don't forget to share that with your colleagues or your friends or everyone who might be interested in the future and in 2021 UX trends. So thank you so much for listening.

If you want to connect, feel free to add me on Instagram at ux.patricia or future of ux podcast and hear you soon.