Forty or fifty years ago, smartphones and self-driving cars were the stuff of science fiction. But thinking about those small things doesn’t cast the amazing technology we have today in quite the amazing, jaw-dropping light it should. We can now bioprint organic material, like cardiac tissue. We can use Crispr technology to edit our DNA, and Google and NASA teamed up to successfully create a working quantum computer. All of those things are real today!
Web Design A Changing Industry
Details Growing in Importance
With better pixel-ratios and screens available on all devices and increasing in number around the world, there will be a much larger emphasis on getting every pixel perfect. And more and more potential consumers will have lived their whole life in the digital age: they’ll be trained to pay more attention. Your kerning will matter more. Your margins will matter more. Average layfolk will note and judge minor imperfections.
Micro-interactions
Devices have been released which swap contact information on touch. You can currently buy a hefty stack of business cards which will take users to your website if they tap it on their phone. These microinteractions are programmable to many different functions, and will grow increasingly prevalent in everyday life. Lead generation for businesses and websites might happen with micro-interactions.
Hapnotic Information Gathering
Hapnotic feedback is basically the touch and tactile feedback provided by interfaces, like virtual keyboards. With the increasingly low cost of EAPs, or films which allow for the use of touch-computing on flat surfaces, it might be possible in a few years for websites to send physical vibrations to smartphone users guiding them to buttons or links, or might allow users to feel different textures on different pages.
Age-Responsiveness
It’s increasingly confirmed that different age groups of users prefer different functions, layouts, and designs. Currently, the capability exists to shift design based on geolocation; but imagine a world where design could adjust according to a user’s age. The best UX designers are creating websites which aren’t ‘one size fits all’ and adjust to meet individual-specific needs. Since age is one of the largest categories into which separate UX needs can be grouped, it’s likely up there with the next big design shifts.
Offboarding Design
There’s been a lot of focus on onboarding design; the particular design that a user sees when they first come to a site. Good designers know that first impressions last a lifetime, and that all onboarding design is important. But it’s likely that more and more focus will also be devoted to creating great offboarding experiences, to ensure that users leave any website with a pervasive sense of trust and certainty of its helpfulness.
The Bottom Line
As different, new, interesting technology comes on-line to users and proliferates through the later half of 2016 and through 2017, we’ll likely be seeing some impressive new implementations of ideas- once the realm of pure sci-fi- becoming reality. Users might be able to feel differences in web design. Websites will respond differently to different age groups. And there will be an ever-increasing focus on design perfection.
