The look and feel delivered by the User Interface (UI) is still the mover and shaker for a mobile app. An app primarily attracts the audience attention through a visually appealing interface. Only when the UI does its duty, the app features and contents can do the needful to drive user engagement and interactions. But UI is far from a constant thing with absolute rules and standards. The User Interface (UI) of mobile apps is continuously evolving just with the change in device features, hardware capabilities, aesthetics and expectations of users for more ease of use.
As a new year is around the corner, like everything else the trending mobile UI design elements also deserve a new evaluation, leading names in mobile app development are all inquisitive about the upcoming UI trends in the coming year. Considering the evolving design elements and UI design practices that are likely to stand out in the coming years, here we are going to explain most credible UI design trends that are going to shape mobile app development in 2019.
Minimalist UI
Minimalist design focusing on clean UI with less visual elements has already become the hottest trend for some years and is very likely to continue through the years to come. Minimalism is more about boosting the usability of an app with simple interactions and design attributes. Some of the well-known caveats of minimalist UI design include the following.
* The easy and straightforward flow of actions, pages and contents that helps effortless navigation.
* Use of more white or negative space to do away with the visual distractions.
* Keeping the number of buttons, navigation options, images and contents for every page limited to minimise cognitive load.
Material Design
Created and unleashed by Google, material design rose as the most credible UI design alternative to flat UI design which focused mainly on presenting contents over a flat surface. Material Design by taking the attributes of usability further can boost engagement with the introduction of materialistic gradients and shadows for giving relief to the elements from their backgrounds.
Here are the critical attributes of Material Design in mobile UI.
* It adds real-life visual elements to otherwise flat UI elements to provoke interaction.
* By giving more realistic shape and appearance to the UI elements it can easily create a hierarchy of contents and app pages.
* Like the flat design, it also focuses on doing more with fewer design inputs and hence accompanies a minimalist design element.
The Overlapping Effect
For some time, applications are appearing with this effect. Fusing the typeface, background and images to deliver an overlapping visual impact is seen across many niche mobile apps in the recent past. As a UI design trend, this will continue to remain relevant for the upcoming year and beyond.
Some of the key benefits of this UI design trend include the following.
* A UI becomes more attention-grabbing with overlapping effect.
* It also creates a breathing space between two pages or consecutive visual elements.
* A mix of overlapping visual elements like images, fonts and colour scheme can be more relevant for effect than a singular element.
Voice Enabled UI
The increasing numbers of people now interact through voice-enabled intelligent assistant applications now. On the other hand, a vast majority of mobile searches now are voice-searches. Naturally, the voice is already in the process if becoming a key element in the mobile UI design. Voice-enabled UI will continue to be a raging trend throughout the coming years.
Here are the key benefits of voice-enabled user interface design.
* It helps users to enjoy more effortless interaction with just voice commands.
* It helps the developers build a leaner and lightweight app by replacing regular input methods with the voice-enabled ones.
* Voice-enabled UI assisting the users to interact faster boosts engagement and business conversion.
Video Content
We all are aware of the increasing popularity of video contents for web and mobile apps. The floodgate of video contents opened by social media platforms left us no option to look back. Now, you have to use video contents in your content strategy, or you have to perish with decreasing user engagement. In the time to come UI designers will continue to take video contents seriously.
Here are some useful tips to use video contents effectively for mobile app UIs.
* It must be short, snappy and interesting to engage users in a jiffy.
* It must explain the “why” and “how” of the subject instantly as soon as it is played.
* A mix of different types of video contents comprising 360-degree video, real-time streaming, 3D and VR and HD video used contextually for relevant purposes will deliver better output.
UI without Buttons
Can you think of ordering a product while shopping through an ecommerce store without tapping on any button? Yes, such effortless output is promised by mobile app UI designed to function without buttons. Come 2019 and this UI design trend can sweep across many mobile app niches.
Let us have a look at the key benefits of designing UI without buttons.
* This will make the entire checkout and transaction process in ecommerce stores effortless.
* This will boost more business conversion and help to reduce indecisive cart abandonment just before completing the transaction.
* It will be a rewarding UX element across apps to allow interactions with least effort.
Conclusion
The UI design trends in the upcoming year are certainly going to include more than what we explained above. Many of the popular UI design elements are still going to stay or become fine-tuned. In overall measure, the UI design trends will continue to see many twists and turn with new design elements.
Also read: Safety Tips to Protect your Device from Mobile Malware – PCRIVER
