This post discusses top 27 long-term mobile UX design trends.
In my experience running a product development agency for more than 5 years, I have noticed product owners giving more importance to UI than UX. In my humble opinion, both matter equally. I have seen UX taking a back seat in many organizations.
However, User Experience is, in fact, the back bone of any product you will ever build. In recent years, we have seen more and more importance being given to mobile UX. With infinite devices available, its becoming imperative for companies to focus on delivering the right mobile experience.
This time, we bring to you some of the most interesting and emerging mobile UX design trends. Soak in some innovative concepts and inspiration to build your next digital product.
Before, we deep dive into the top 27 mobile ux design trends, here’s why you should give importance to mobile user experience design.
Deciphering Mobile User Experience Design
Mobile UX focuses on designing applications/websites depending on the needs of mobile users. This includes user experience design for mobiles, tablets (hand held devices) and even wearables.
There are almost 5.22 billion unique mobile phone users in the world. Hence it makes a lot of sense or rather it is imperative to design experiences keeping in mind their requirements, behaviour and environment.
Why do we need to talk more about Mobile UX Design?
The needs of mobile users are very subjective. What might work in one scenario might not work in another.
Within 3 months of an app’s launch, it is expected to lose almost 95% of its user base. You will be like -
1. Voice Input UX
With Alexa and Google Home finding a way in our daily lives, voice based user interfaces are emerging as a new trend since the last couple of years. It is estimated that around 128 million people in the US use voice assistants at least once a month.
Justin Baker, the design lead at Altassian very simply describes a VUI -
Voice User Interfaces (VUI) are the primary or supplementary visual, auditory, and tactile interfaces that enable voice interaction between people and devices.
While designing UX for voice based interfaces, make sure you pay attention to the device type, constraints, context and the environment it is being used in. Understand the key use cases and accordingly craft unique experiences. Not only do VUIs help create advanced personalizations these also offer a better touch less experience and reduce the number of steps a user needs to do for a particular task.
2. Augmented Reality
If you have seen Minority Report or Iron Man, you will understand what I am trying to say. AR helps super — impose information on top of objects, images, text etc. We assume that AR will be pre-dominantly be used in education, art and entertainment as it helps users gather deeper understanding of the environments they are interacting with. For instance, imagine a kid using an app with AR features. What exactly happens is, when the kid scans the picture of an elephant, he/she will be able to see a video or a 3D model of elephant. This helps drive the learning process.
Though you will also find the use of AR in medical and travel industries.
Watch this video -
3. Virtual Reality
People tend to confuse between augmented reality and virtual reality. These two differ in a number of ways. The Franklin Institute’s post gives an apt difference between AR, VR and MR (Mixed Reality). Here you go -
AR adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. Examples of augmented reality experiences include Snapchat lenses and the game Pokemon Go.
VR implies a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world. Using VR devices such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, users can be transported into a number of real-world and imagined environments such as the middle of a squawking penguin colony or even the back of a dragon.
MR combines elements of both AR and VR, real-world and digital objects interact. Mixed reality technology is just now starting to take off with Microsoft’s HoloLens one of the most notable early mixed reality apparatuses.
Virtual reality based mobile apps will see a continuous rise in the years to come for a whole different level of interactivity that they offer.
Titans of Space Cardboard VR is an excellent example of an android based VR app. Check it out here.
For more such apps visit these links -
4. Gamification
Can’t stress enough on the importance of gamification in mobile app designs these days. One of the biggest benefits of this mobile design ux trend is that it ensures increased user engagement. By carefully applying game mechanics into your app, you can see a considerable increase in daily active usage.
Here’s a gamified health app concept. Source: Dribbble
5. Data Visualization
We see a trend shifting towards showing interactive data in mobile designs these days. Better to show highly contextual data using charts, graphs etc. than using simple text for statistics. Take a look at this design -Here
With data visualization in mobile design, you allow users to interact with data depending on their preferences. It makes the experience highly personal.
The pudding shows some excellent data visualization regarding the spectrum of skin tones presented on the cover of Vogue:
This depiction is far better than just saying, “Over the magazine’s 200-plus issues, 75% of Vogue’s cover models tend more towards fairer skin tones.”