Looking back at looking forward
When the year rolled over, I did an article for the company blog regarding the up and coming trends for 2016 -- 4 months later, I was checking in and realized not much has changed, so here is what seems to be happening with web design this year:
Web design moves quickly, especially with Google pushing it along, and customers looking to ROI parameters from their designers. In the past year, we had emphasis on responsiveness, code security, and optimization, and flat design.
1) There will be much more attention to information design than ever before. Your User Interface, how it is coded, it’s accessibility and logical flow will become of paramount importance. 4 Months in there is no reason to believe folks are paying attention to information design any more than they did in 2015 -- which makes me want to cry.
2) Losing hard earned eyeballs to unnecessary scroll or click is no fun. Optimizing scrolls and clicks will become as necessary as the images being used on the site.
The ROI for design is on top of everyone’s mind now a days, as a result we expect to see even more emphasis on coherent UX, optimized click throughs, and scrolls. When the facts are explained to the business owner, they catch on fast and the design is modified accordingly, but there are still designers out there that will refuse to be functional.
3) About a decade ago, many of us began the quest for creating a modular yet object oriented environment for design based on a grid system. With the success of Wix, commander and the like, it seems this may be the year that everyone will accept modular design in a grid system as the bedrock responsive design.
We have noticed at least 6 (that we have played with) new CMS' that are providing some variation of modular grid based design as part of their template building. I could almost swear that they are all copying commander, but that maybe my imagination.
4) Flat design is all the rage now, and we don’t see that changing for a while.
YUP!
5) We have forever recommended the use of better quality imagery and iconography and following the expansion of personalized photography in the past year, the trend toward quality should continue.
And most of our clients have already caught on, and are willing conspirators.
6) The influence of app design on web design will be even more pronounced, with form factors (e.g. full screen forms), and movement (horizontal scrolling – ONLY) that more closely resembles the app users’ experience.
We are noticing some folks taking this a bit too far. A website we visited recently looked amazing on the mobile and tablet but the navigation on the computer was so convoluted that we threw in the towel. There is no reason to be elitist and dismiss the older and less sophisticated users for the sake of looks.
7) The new applications such as JustinMind or Axure for Rapid prototyping, and Sketch for design and their online cousins such as inVision have become very popular, and we see even a bigger trend towards the use of these new tools for rapid prototyping and design of sites in 2016.
How true that is. Our team's use of Photoshop, and traditional prototyping procedures has been cut to half of what it was at the beginning of the year.