The 5G race has officially begun. Soon, the advancement of 5G will spill over to how we design our websites, mobile apps etc in a positive way. In 2020 and beyond, the UI and UX trends will be dominated by changes introduced by 5G. Here are the top UI and UX trends for you to watch out in 2020!
UI Trends of 2020
UX Trends of 2020
1. Custom-made graphics
A good picture with people relevant to your business will always add value to your business. In addition, your business will appear more convincing and approachable.
However, if you do not possess such pictures, it is not necessary to buy stock photos with faces that you do not recognize. Instead, consider designing your own unique graphics to feature in your website or digital contents. Coincidentally, Olympic Games Tokyo will take place in 2020, think graphics, manga, and anime when you think of Japan. It will inspire the use of unique graphics and special characters.
2. Motion graphics and motion effects
A complex animation may be slow to load for users. Such concern will not exist anymore in 2020 and beyond with the rise of 5G.
5G will completely revolutionize the way we currently design. A website with static images and contents may still be acceptable now but it may be perceived as dull and boring in the future. 5G combined with significantly better mobile display quality allows designers to be creative in animating texts, fonts, graphics, the entrance of various elements, etc.
3. Use of less-contrasting gradient
The use of gradient colors is already on the rise. In 2020, more websites will start to adopt less-contrasting gradients such as blue to light blue, light to dark grey, etc.
4. Designing for speed
As mentioned earlier, 5G is finally starting to roll out across the globe. Data transfer speed and latency time will improve significantly. What this means for you is that slowness on any page, any function, any moment is not acceptable to users anymore.
It is rumored that all iPhone releases from 2020 will come with 5G capability.
A slow website or slow digital applications will be regarded as having bad UX. Before doing any form of UX research, make sure that your site is fast or the first thing you will get from your users is that “it is slow”.
5. No more loaders
As part of good UX practices, a loader (the button that shows that the page is loading) is necessary if your page takes more than a few seconds to load to inform users on the state and prevent the user from navigating to other pages. Some of the good UX practices such as loaders will slowly become irrelevant with 5G.
Note: If your call-to-action requires time to process, such as order confirmation or transferring funds, you might want to keep your loaders.
6. Product owner everywhere
For companies or organizations with digital or e-commerce presence, it is not new anymore to have multiple product owners throughout the company. There are mobile app product owners, backend product owners, to as niche as SEO product owner. A product owner is usually in charge of a digital product, from managing user requirements, overseeing the development stages, to ensuring continuous testing and improvements, with the ultimate aim of increasing values for end-users.
From 2020 onwards, the term product owner will be used rampantly across the digital industry and traditional non-digital businesses. You may even see a vegetable product owner, meat product owner for a grocery delivery company or supermarket.
7. UX audit becoming a trend
If the purpose of an independent financial audit in accounting is to ensure that the financial statement complies with accounting principles, an independent UX audit helps management to examine the performance of their digital contents by industry standards and whether they are in line with the latest trends and technology.
For a company reliant on sales online, an annual UX audit is crucial to maintain competitiveness and to discover problems in your website/ app/ software/ platform that you may not aware of.
Special Mention: UX writing (continuing from 2019)
UX writing is a trend from 2019 and it will continue to be hot in 2020. Read more about UX writing here.
