This was our last week of the semester, and time to give our pitch presentations. We were split into smaller groups to present rather than the having the whole class watching. I gave my presentation to three classmates and the three panel members. I was pleased with how I presented especially as I was feeling quite nervous beforehand and I received positive feedback. The only negative was the visual design of my slide deck, which I was aware of I simply spent more time on researching and validating my idea and simply ran out of time.
As we were presenting this week there was no lecture content, so as we come to the end of this module and the year I decided to look at some articles to see what UX and UI trends we might see in 2024.
Lots of UX content creators have been writing articles and blog posts on what they believe will be the big design UX design trends in 2024. I decided to check out a few of these and see what they had to say. I stuck to posts on Medium and here are the links to the three posts I used for this summary.
https://shubhiamittal.medium.com/ux-trends-that-you-will-see-in-2024-4bf9b7936b64
https://suhaspalukuri.medium.com/2024-ux-trends-huge-updates-09546821a2f5
https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/the-emotional-intelligence-of-ux-how-2024s-personalization-is-more-human-than-ever-e59c7a1f887a
I will start by looking at a couple of things that all three articles talked about, personalisation and Artificial Intelligence.
Its not a surprise to see AI on the list of trends for 2024, it has been growing throughout 2023 with more advanced models being released and the amount of people using AI has grown hugely. Even for myself at the start of 2023 I had only used AI as an experiment to see what people were talking about. However, as the year progressed, I found myself using it more and more frequently for inspiration for naming projects, helping with user personas even creating character illustrations for mock-ups. I find myself really liking the fact that if I hit a roadblock on a project or need something I cannot find online there is another option now. AI is by no means the answer to all questions however, with the right prompts it can definitely be another useful tool in a designer’s arsenal. I have also started to hear people who work nowhere near technology starting to use AI even if just for fun, I expect that people will find more and more uses for AI in 2024.
How will UX benefit from AI in 2024, well according to these articles we are going to see a huge rise in the amount of personalisation that websites and apps are able to offer. Using AI models in the background to crunch huge amounts of data from your web history, smartphone, even smartwatch websites will be able to tailor their experience much better to each individual user. I would expect e-commerce to be some of the first businesses to embrace this with even more accurate suggestions of things for you to buy. I did read in one of these articles the possibility of using metrics from a smartwatch to tailor a UX to your mood, sounds far-fetched, I’ll be interested to see if this becomes a reality.
Another trend that is expected is sustainable design, it seems as if we have been hearing the warnings about unsustainable behaviour for a long time now and it is yet to make much difference. However, with the calls getting louder and many activist groups gaining further support, I would expect to see some far-sighted companies look at making sustainable products. We could see more suggestions within existing products to choose more sustainable options, Google Maps already prioritises fuel economy when selecting how to route you to your destination, why not offer alternative travel options, perhaps showing you public transport or car sharing options where available.
With the expected release of Apple’s Vision Pro this year, it’s interesting to see augmented and virtual reality being listed as another area expected to see huge growth. We have heard a lot about XR in the past and it has just never really taken off as people have expected. I do think a lot of the expectation that this year will be different is due to Apple, but with the expected cost of the Vision Pro to be well beyond the price range of the average person there will be a reliance on businesses to embrace the technology and look for new products if XR is to be the trend of 2024.
On visual design I have seen different suggestions with Bento Box UIs being listed as the trend of 2023 what will 2024 bring. One suggestion is embracing imperfection with more hand-drawn elements bringing more humanity into design. However, with an industry that is based around consistency it will be hard to get used to interfaces with inconsistencies. While it might work for specific products, I can’t see it being adopted across the board.
Another suggestion is futuristic design styles taking inspiration from abstract art to create highly visual and involving interfaces, with neomorphism being listed as only the start. Having looked at neomorphism it is a subtle effect of almost engraving the UI into the background and it has received plenty of criticism for its lack of accessibility. I’m not sure except for in specialist cases or Dribble projects how really radical futuristic design could work.
Other trends that we could see in 2024 include more micro-interactions and design in general linked to people’s mood when doing the task. While this sounds similar to using smartwatch data for personalisation like I mentioned above I believe this will be more subtle. Designers may use to colour in this case to suggest emotions rather than match your emotions with data. We could see calming colours used for reassuring actions, with bright and energetic colours used for more exciting tasks.
I take these predictions with a pinch of salt; they are simply the opinions of the people that are writing the pieces. We don’t know what will become the big trend, but I do think that AI and increased personalisation would be solid bets. How far they will go and how much resistance they face is the unknown factor and will come down to the ethics of how they get their data. It could be the year of AI or the year that people turned against AI who knows.
As with the other trends I have witnessed quite a few predictions of XR being the next big thing and while I think we will see increasing use of the technology I’m not sure if it will be a meteoric rise or something that grows at a slower pace.
Whatever happens it will be interesting to see what 2024 brings.