User experience design continually evolves with time- staying on top of technology. In this article, UX Design Trends for 2022, we will cover the ongoing and incoming trends to provide users with the best experience when it comes to interacting with the product.
We will cover the following trends:
The goal of UX design for 2022 includes:
- Meet the new demands and provide users the best localized user experience when it comes to product interaction
- Ensures that brands and businesses have the available tools they need to keep up with the new developments to satisfy the users
Here are the 2022 UX trends that we expect to see more:
The 2022 UX design trends
Personalized experiences
We've seen a lot of personalized experiences around us, from curated show recommendations in Netflix and the pre-made playlist for the user in Spotify. All these are examples of what a customized user experience is.
Many brands and companies are not collecting more user data such as demographics, behavioral data, localization, and more to provide their users the best personal user experience with their products.
This kind of personalization benefits the companies (especially in Ecommerce) since these data are helpful to target potential customers.
The goal for many designers in UX is not just to improve the customer experience but more to curate a personalized, meaningful experience for users.
The world of the metaverse
This is very new in the world of UI and UX design. Facebook made a massive jump in promoting metaverse as part of its product's goals.
Metaverse is a virtual world where users can connect to each other using their digital devices. An excellent example of a metaverse is the wearing of a VR (virtual reality) device.
Facebook launched the VR remote work app to create the metaverse world for its users. The goal of this product is to enable users to conduct VR meetings and create an avatar of themselves.
Advanced cursor interactions
A cursor is an essential web design tool that lets users and the user interface interact with each other.
We have seen a lot of development in cursors over the past few years, and this was made possible by UX design programs like Figma to create a more refined utilization of this element.
This element will be part of the UX trends for 2022, where cursor designs will play an essential role in delivering an innovative and trendy user experience.
The more advanced cursor design will not be just about how excellent the design will be but more about creating an effective user experience. A part of this change will be fewer buttons to take action, and all of these will be replaced by the cursor.
Desktop versions of the apps
We've seen a lot of browser-based applications having desktop app versions. We now have Facebook messenger, Slack, and Todoist with desktop versions.
Companies are providing the desktop versions of their apps as users feel more safe and comfortable that way. Users want their apps away from their browsers, and they want to have fewer opened tabs. The beauty of running the apps in the desktop background has helped companies improve their notification management.
Data visualization
Data visualization is putting data into visual content in a way that builds a story for the user. This UI UX design trends are invaluable as it fosters a good user experience and improves how users interact with the product, which builds trust in the long run.
One example would be the power of users to screen time data on devices provides a level of transparency, which makes users accountable for their phone usage.
Another example of data visualization is Spotify's bright and trendy interface. The dashboard displays the user's data summary personalized and fun.
By 2022, more tech companies will be working more in getting that can help improve the interaction of their users to their products. This will have a widespread positive impact on the users' lives. We will see several features that will place more value on the users and features that will show more aesthetics.
Applications shown on large screens
Google updated its material design to expand its adaptive capabilities to help prepare the mobile application for all form factors such as large screens. Thus, screen sizes and pixels are not enough.
Prepare the apps to fit larger screens, especially the desktops. This 2022, it is time to start adapting your UI UX design for larger screens.
Dark mode
You may have already noticed this option in your phone or laptop settings. The dark mode is a user interface setting with a predominantly dark theme color palette. It optimizes the darker tones for the background and flips the design, so the text and other primary details stick out in light colors.
The dark mode has already existed for many years as it has been used by several programs like Apple, YouTube, and Google. However, for 2022, we can see this feature to exist and become a default design feature in UI UX design system.
We can expect to see more apps, websites, and products using the dark theme mode feature and more product designs enabling us to do so. For example, most mobile phones now offer users to switch to dark mode whenever they prefer to use it.
Storytelling in design
This 2022, instead of scrolling the content, a more effective way to grab the user's attention is to do storytelling.
Now, content can be presented in a way that text and design go hand in hand. UX designers can make storytelling on a website/web design, wherein each scroll illustration, fonts, snippets of text or bold typography, and other elements come to life.
UX designers can influence the course of storytelling to make the users feel like participants in every event on their screens.
Storytelling makes the users actually read the content. This 2022 storytelling has already begun, and it normalizes the way users read the content on the website and web design.
Life, for example, a fitness website offering gym memberships can lead the users to sign up through a storytelling design process. Users find a local gym's website and click on it, and they are taken into fresh, engaging, and new sections. This is now very common that users do not even realize the storytelling technique.
Micro-interactions
Micro-interactions are small, visual movements that have a more significant impact on UX and UI UX design. These are the like buttons or the scroll bar that shows where a user is on landing pages.
Whether it be a swipe, hover, animation, or data input, micro-interactions have a purpose- that is, to make the user experience more engaging, enjoyable, and interesting to users.
Google started this trend several years back when it made the buttons enlarge when users click on them. In 2022, we will see from static to more dynamic micro-interaction collaboration features in UX design.
We will see more of these trends become standardized, especially in mobile and desktop UX design.
New 3D design tools
We talked about creating UX trends to accommodate the ever-changing user behaviors when it comes to interacting with a product. Thus, we will need to complete the tools to create exciting visuals like in 3D to make this possible.
This 2022 will be more about the proliferation of the 3D design tools to help create visual trends in UX design process.
It is a typical response to make a graphic design tool available once it gained popularity in the UX industry.
Password-less logins
A 2005 survey showed that many people are challenged when it comes to logging in using their passwords. This insight led that people are more confused than secure when it comes to passwords.
Based on the survey, 57% of users forget their passwords right after resetting them. 65% of users felt the need to write down their passwords not to forget.
We can say that forgetting a password is a common pain point for users that UX designers need to address and conduct usability testing.
We can see that the real problem lies with password-setting protocols requiring users to include special characters, numerals, upper case, lower case, and more. Because of security reasons, these requirements only add complexity that leads the users to resetting their passwords repeatedly.
A simple solution is to offer the users an easy login. We can now see a lot of websites and mobile applications that transition to passwordless logins by asking the user to log in using their Google or Facebook account. You may also see devices that only require users to scan their iris or use their fingertips to log in.
This UX design is one of the most emerging trends that we have seen since 2016. However, passwordless login is growing gradually, and we may know this feature will emerge more in 2022 and beyond that.
Clean user interfaces
A clean user interface (UI) is a common goal to aim for every UI UX designer. However, since we are discussing the emerging design system and trends for 2022, it is not a bad idea to include a twist in designing the user interface.
We can see several minor design twists, which had a positive effect, even for minimalist designs. You may see an entire user interface in black and white with flat design icons. However, the generic designs implement a sophisticated gradient.
This is an excellent example of how unexpected visuals and behaviors can successfully general a positive result from the users.
Air Gesture
The air gesture control is a new mobile design trend that promotes the use of body gestures to perform a specific action. For example, a user performing a palm gesture in front of the camera signals the camera to take a selfie.
A lot has changed since we have touch screens. Some of these changes are increased mobile design size increase in aspect ratios with fewer bezels in the front, which means better gestures.
There are so many possibilities for in-air gestures. The most significant advantage of using air gestures lies in its intuitiveness and sensitivity to touch.
Gestures always play a part in UX design, no matter how the gesture trend goes.
Gaming experiences
Since the pandemic, the gaming industry has become very popular as people try to find something fun to do during the lockdown. It is no surprise that the gaming behavior is a continuing trend that we will see more in UX design,
In 2022, brands and companies will start to use micro-interactions and playful content (such as digital storytelling) to mimic playful interactions like a video game to make users feel the action.
This trend will significantly impact how users interact with the product and vice versa. We now see more companies using this strategy as their marketing and branding.
We expect to see more of this trend in 2022, and it will likely become a regular part of the web, creating new entertaining spaces for the users.
Whether the gaming trend is implemented aesthetically on a website and web design trends using an icon or an image or a wholly blown UX design integrated into the brand's marketing funnel, it will surely grab users' attention.
Responsive design
Every year, we see varying screen sizes for mobiles in the market. Because of this, there is a need for UX designers to adapt their products to these devices- whether it be mobile, TV, laptop, or desktop.
This is where the responsive design comes in. Responsive and animated interactions design means setting up a fluid user experience that adjusts to fit any browser or device, and this ensures consistency across all the devices.
While the responsive digital design has been here for a while, there is a need to understand more about it. The more we know, the more we need to provide improvements.
Last 2021, 55% of traffic came from mobile devices. This means that the best-looking design should be everywhere.
Last thoughts
The above list of UX design trends for 2022 is a quick guide for UI UX designers to create better user experience designs for the ever-changing market and demand in technology.
The new UX design trends gear towards more convenient and smarter ideas that can make our lives better. It is predicted that UI trends in 2022 will focus on the above-mentioned UI and UX design trends. In addition, we can also say that 2022 will have an inclusive design, big typography, mobile-first approaches, voice assistants, and the use of artificial intelligence.
It is essential to keep yourself updated on these design trends to help you with UX research to better design for the users and be more flexible as a company brand as time goes by. Explore your options, be creative, and utilize these emerging UX design trends to provide users the best experience when it comes to interacting with your product.