User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design in India is still at its nascent stage. The traditional basic animated design includes hand-written texts and drawings of static images. Gradually, with the rise of personal computing in the 1980s and then the Web in the 1990s, many of these trends converged on each other. Graphical user interfaces, cognitive science, and designing for the people became the foundation for the field of UX and UI. Suddenly, more people had access to computers and, along with it, a greater need to understand and optimize their use. Human and computer interactions popularized concepts like usability and interaction design, both of which are important forebears to the user experience.
Around the same time, the industrial and professional designers with their latest skills and updates were taking shape. The corporations were growing and advances in machine technology were an inspiring industry to push the boundaries of what human labor could make possible. The change of increased awareness, adaptability and inquisitiveness in the market for the field of digital design brought new perspective and clients to have a better understanding of UX, User Research, Wireframes and UI. From explanatory and basic design workshops for clients it moved towards the ecosystem that reckons the fundamentals of design along with its criticality as a success factor.
This interesting move from simple flat animations, mostly text to SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) for better engagement and increased usability, wouldn’t have been possible without the advances in computer languages like, CSS3, HTML5, and jQuery. This enhancement has swamped with high demands from the clients for the usage of WebGL (a web standard created to display 3D graphics in any platform that supports Open Graphics Library) taking the user experience to a whole new level.
Before, a client only opted to design for their responsive websites as the desktop was the main priority at that time. But later, there was a shift towards mobile approach with companies realizing the importance and increased usage of mobiles. The mobile app design companies are the expert service providers with e-commerce app designs as well as designing for a range of other mobile applications. According to their customers demand they develop an app for Android as well as iPhone.
Latest Trends in Mobile App Design
Internet users are continuously switching from desktop to mobile, and that has increased the importance of this mobile platform. Regardless of the size and industry, every company needs a mobile app. This makes the field of mobile designing grow and develop each single day. Each innovation is going to be a novel entry in this field of design.
Sound Design: The sound design is an integral part in designing the mobile applications. Currently, only few companies like Facebook is using this trend. The small sound on the click of comment or while selecting your smiley is a way of making the whole experience delightful and not mundane.
Augmented Reality: Smart machines are entering our lives, and augmented reality is playing an important role. Do you remember Pokémon Go? That game changed the history of augmented reality in mobile technology. This technology will become more important, especially in gaming apps.
Conversational UX & Chatbots: This is another important element of the evolution of mobile app design. There are a large number of tasks that can be performed through voice command interfaces. Examples of this include making phone calls, searching the internet, or even ordering food. Banking applications, as an example, can help to check account balance through voice commands.
Videos instead of Images: The change from images to videos is highly accepted by the users of mobile technology. They like to watch videos on their devices instead of reading or looking at an image. This has become even more important because of the significant improvement in mobile internet speeds. By introducing videos, it has been able to show stories to the users and interact with them in a much better way than with text.
GIFs illustrations: Animated images otherwise known as GIF have never been stronger back at the dawn of the Internet age. GIFs were normally characterized by the little clipart images that moved excitably. Today, GIFs are playing an increasingly important role on the web, telling stories and giving us new ways to express our emotions when we can’t do it in person. There’s no doubt about it – GIFs and social media have indeed become BFFs.
Gestures: Be it Android or iPhone app design, the trend of gestures is effective in improving the mobile experience. Apart from the two basic functions of swiping and scrolling there are many other gestures that will enhance the usability and retention rates.
The Future is what we are waiting for!
Mobile app UI is likely to become more universal across tablets and smartphones as the number of gadgets is increasing. Seamless product experiences and variations in designing will be the norm in the future. Moreover, designing and user experience will not only be limited in the source of entertainment but also for the location-based apps, cloud computing apps, mobile security apps and much more.
So it is not that easy to foresee the future of user experience and user interface where limitless technologies are reaching to every corner of our life. Designing can continue to innovate and remain a strong player in the future market as it has the exciting ideas, resources and know-how to change the future scopes.
The New Direction of UX/UI in Smartphones
