Applications are becoming more like an emotional touch-point today. Users are not returning to the applications that are failing to deliver a seamless experience. New disruptive technologies such us personalized design, voice user interface, one-touch authentication are redefining application experience. Hence, UX (User Experience) design is growing up to an inevitable factor in app development.
The thump-stopping estimates of the UX market reveal its promising potential across the industry. A press release of Market Watch says the market proportion of UX is going to hit $420 million by 2025. This is extremely a massive leap from its market worth of $130 million on 2018. This implies as time pass by the way people feel mobile apps and websites should convince the users in all aspects.
However, let’s check out why UX is gaining importance and the mandatory UX goals that designers are required to meet
What is UX, and why it is important?
In this digital world, User experience is defined as the way users feel when using a digital product. However, the possibility of experience can be turned into positive/negative. To illustrate, suppose you are using Google maps to travel to a new town. You are on the way, and your clients are desperately calling to know how soon you can reach there. Knowing all the questions that arise in your mind, Google incorporates every answer on a single search result. You can tell them the distance remaining, the time, the traffic and even weather conditions. This is a simple example of a positive User Experience.
Likewise, User experience is the feeling that a user gets when they interact with anything. And this is what a user expects while pulling down any application or website on the screen. If the product delivers a simple, specific, actionable and time-bounded experience it possesses an exceptional UX design.
Yet, it involves a lot of elements and expertise to bring forth a successful User experience. In spite of the design factors, UX designers should acquire decent business knowledge, strategic ideation, product objectives, and user expectations.
Why Is UX Important?
The importance of User Experience in digital product design is its ability to upscale businesses with a legitimate customer journey analysis. Plus, UX constitutes the overall impression of the product/service. Additionally, it enables both the managers and designers to understand what users need out of the product. Hence, keeping the business goals and user interests in mind providing an amazing digital product experience is inevitable that comforts the users.
Positive user experience provides a clear route map to engage and retain customers. In addition, the way people wish to experience the same product would be different. Hence a simplistic design that walks the users across the app without any efforts works. The trends and behavior of users differ from season to season. Thus, it demands to add appropriate UX design trends on digital products.
It is evident from the user behavior researches that 97% of visitors leave the app/website which is poor in user experience and they never return. The case is the same if the application fails to perform well in the users’ mobile devices and takes more time to load. Especially, eCommerce websites are more prone to get victimized of these menaces.
Similarly, the productive factor that contributes to the positive User experience of digital products is many. And stacking all these factors in a convincing way is more significant. As the trends, design stacks, business goals, and user behavior change, UX practice has to be drafted in a user-centric manner.
What are the UX design trends expected in 2022?
As technology grows and becomes more sophisticated, the behavior of people also tends to change. Thus, it will impact the expectations of users. People demand more simple yet sophistic solutions for their problems. As a result, the designer and developers have to deliver the solution with an impressive appearance that aligns with the trends.
Here is the list of UX design trends in 2022
1. Personalized Experience
How it would feel like if your phone greets you in the morning. How it tastes like, you are welcome back to start from where you left yesterday! Using the most suitable tactics which complement technology elements with user experience gives an emotional experience to users.
To say that, based on the use case of the applications, a business can customize the app experience. Akin to the personalized landing pages strategy using by eCommerce apps, all sorts of businesses can draw users. Further, mapping user behavior such as most viewed pages and frequently clicked buttons, designers can add triggering buttons or pop-ups to drive the customer to make a move. And they can implement new technologies such as machine learning models to pump user-specific contents along with random prompts.
2. Cross-device usability
Gone are the days of single-user-single-device application design. People use multiple devices with diversified capacities today. It may be mobile phones, wearable, tablets, laptops and so on. In this age of the Internet of Things (IoT) Cross-device usability is of great significance. Consequently, applications should be adaptable to any appropriate devices as users choose to have it in.
To deliver a consistent app experience across multiple devices, it takes a strategic design plan and consistent data transaction algorithm. The consistency of user interfaces and the functionality of app and devices determine cross-platform usability. Thus, UX designers are required to frame out the design, which can be distributed across different devices. Further, it should align with the device functionality.
3. Voice User Interface
Electronic devices are ready to perform upon our voice commands today. Modern device manufacturers are equipping their products with listening capability. Thus, it is making a paradigm shift across the User Experience. However, it requires high precision natural language processing capabilities. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence numerous data architects are working on this technology.
Tech-giants such as Amazon and Google are encouraging the manufacturers to enable their gadgets with voice interaction capacity. User research done by Gartner reveals that about 30% of internet searches would be voice search. Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple Siri are already leaped to this future hands-free user experience factor. Moreover, as IoT devices overtake the electronic marketplace with the hyper 5G network, the voice user interface would turn to be a ubiquitous user experience element.
4. One-touch authentication
We know how much troubling is to coin a strong password. It should include uppercase, lowercase, special character and easy to remember yet hard to guess. Moreover, it is recommended to change passwords often. A vast group of users are experiencing such troubles and being forced to hit the “forget password” links to reset it. As a result, providing a simplified authentication is imperative to improve user experience.
However, a lot of new methods are developed to mitigate this daunting issue. Bio-metric authentication, magic links, and one-time-password models are some of them. These methods eliminate the need for puzzling passwords and remembering all the way. Moreover, these simple authentication models gained more reception across users.
5. Clutter-clear Storytelling (UX writing)
If the content fails to convey the core business to the customer, all efforts will go in vain. Many companies have been a victim of this challenge at their initial days. Even though the landing pages are ornate with all the advanced tools and elements, it won’t help at the end of the day. If the user could neither find their need and nor understand at their first glance they will bounce away.
Thus, UX writing is an essential factor in app design. Even if there is a need to explain the service/business, it is better to welcome the users with a few gentle sentences. Else, trying a short video explanation fits with the user experience trends. To teach, to prompt, to navigate the users’ clutter-free storytelling is imperative across every page. This nifty content strategy helps to produce a better user experience.
5. Mindful-minimal Design
Mindful designs possess some common qualities in every product design process. It will make the users fall in love at first sight. In-app design there would be a design pattern to follow which aligns with business goals. Such factors may demand to add more content, marketing elements, business visions, etc. Yet, keeping a mindful approach all across the functionality, space utilization, content distribution, and visual contents gives an equal experience to the users.
The best approach to put together such a mindful experience is minimalism. Putting simplicity as its core denominator and adding clarity to all the sequenced elements are the essential factors in minimalism. Today, enterprises are remolding their digital presence with a minimalist approach. Eliminating the non-functional elements and gather all functionality with high attention minimalism is in high trend for app design practice.
6. Inspiring Feedback
Instant reply’s always stirred the users to stay tuned. To illustrate, suppose you placed a query through the contact form. Unfortunately, you never received any kind of feedback from them. You would get perplexed whether they noticed your request or not. Eventually, you lose hope and go for another solution.
Similarly, a prompt response triggers the trust in users and it grows into loyalty towards the product. From an emotional point of view, these simple gestures of response create a large impact across the users. Hence, a quick, appropriate and real-like feedback makes a good user experience.
7. Inclusive UX Design
Your User Experience Design must be accessible and inclusive of all consumer groups. Accessibility means turning your UX design usable for everyone including people with certain physical disabilities, cognitive disorders, visual/hearing impairments, and the elderly. By welcoming these users to your application or website you not only reach a wider audience, but you also fulfill a social responsibility which will significantly improve your company’s reputation. Make sure your UX components facilitate assistive software such as screen magnifiers and text readers, add keyboard navigation, and use colors that will not confuse those with color blindness.
8. Tutorials and On-boardings
By overcomplicating UX design, you may push users away from your app/website before they even begin to understand your products and services. Users may not return to your website/app if their first experience with your design is not optimal. If you cannot do away with certain complication features you need to add proper tutorials and Onboarding to capture the users’ attention. Companies that are investing in adding comprehensive on boardings to introduce their users to the product are succeeding and growing constantly. Make your UX design as interactive and fun as possible to keep the users engaged.
9. UX Audit
A UX Design audit can help businesses understand where they stand in the market and study their user satisfaction metrics in-depth. Such audits help in identifying the barriers to usability and intuitiveness of your User Experience Design. Is your design not responsive to different devices? Is it too difficult to navigate? Does it increase the cognitive load for users? What are the gaps in the design? Which components are engaging the users or making them leave without converting? A design audit can help you answer all these questions and improve your company’s online presence.
Conclusion:
The user’s experience is a collective process of sequencing in app design. Numbers of matters have to be aligned to deliver a positive user experience. However, all these elements may never satisfy a user at all. As the trends and user-behavior change, design practices are required to change at the same pace. Fortunately, we have advanced technologies such as big data and machine learning models to keep up the technologies to the pace.
