Top 5 UX Design Trends for 2019

UX continues to expand dramatically in a variety of directions, such as content centered experiences, personalization, CSS animations, JS frameworks, augmented reality, AI and VR. The trends in this article emphasize 5 value-based techniques for enhancing brands and consequently increasing lead flow. 

“Once your page loads, users form an opinion in .05 seconds.”
(Blue Corona)

1. Content-Centered Experiences
Content-based design continues to increase in popularity. The credo here is ‘the best interface is no interface’.  It declutters the screen, using plenty of background space (or in design terms ‘negative’ space), so the content can shine. Since most people use multiple screens simultaneously, and attention spans continue to decrease, simplifying the UI is increasingly more appealing. This puts more pressure on the content (words, images, videos) to communicate clearly the message for each page.

GoodFirms Research conducted a survey of 200+ web design agencies and found that crowded web design is the most common mistake small businesses make when designing a website, confusing visitors and making them hit the back button.

Here are 3 examples of effective Content-Centered design.

Jit

Oakley

Only Once 

2. JS Frameworks
Vue and React are two of the more popular javascript frameworks that make websites super fast. Content is loaded through an API that uses advanced caching. See this example.

Note when a page is clicked on the display is immediate. The time it takes to load a page is critical for retaining the visitor. It’s estimated that a delay of one second costs Amazon $1.8 billion and 40% of users will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Using a JS framework is becoming more of a standard and can integrate with a CMS such as WordPress and Drupal.

3. Personalization Goes Mainstream
This has been around for a while and is mostly thought of as relevant for e-commerce and large sites such as Amazon, Hulu, and Youtube. Personalization has historically over promised and under delivered. But it’s now more pervasive, mainstream and easier to use. Content management systems and marketing platforms such as Hubspot, Acquia Lift and Optimizely include ways to personalize web content based on information users have provided or their browsing history. It helps if the user has logged in indicating preferences, but not required.

For example HubSpot includes a “make smart” link when creating new website pages. 

This provides rules for pages that display personalized content for users. A simple example is someone provides their name e.g. Jane, so that when Jane lands on a page it says “Welcome back Jane” instead of “Welcome back”. While this may seem uncompelling, conversion rates on personalized pages perform significantly higher even with a simple amount of personalization.

Learn more about personalization at: Hubspot, Acquia Lift, and Optimizely. 

4. Long Animated Pages: CSS allows for elegant animated effects and entertaining scrolling features. See Bear Grylls’s site. 

Note how scrolling adds visual effects and is an easier way to navigate than clicking on different pages. In this instance, the animations support the brand and content. The UX mimics what it’s like to explore the wild places.

5. Interactive Infographics: This is an effective way to communicate complex information efficiently. While this isn’t a new trend, it’s underutilized. See this example by Cisco.

 Note how compressed the information is and how accessible benefits are and how easy to use this animated infographic is. This is best used for technical applications and displayed on desktop computers. On mobile, the design becomes a list of features and no longer interactive.

So there you have it 5 UX design trends that are worth knowing about and using when the opportunity arises. 

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