It’s that time again, inching to the close of 2022, we’re beginning to sense which way design trends will sway in 2023. According to this study, it takes as little as 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds!) for users to decide if a website is worth exploring or to leave. The same study also states that 88% of consumers online will likely not return after a bad experience. While we’re increasingly leaning into a mobile-first approach to design, 83% mobile users believe a seamless experience and device integration is also valuable. 61% of mobile users drop off when they encounter clunky design and 40% will inevitably land on a competitor site.
As a team focused on building products and mobile apps that deliver on business goals as much as on user experience, we’re naturally very interested in staying on the right side of the curve. This is by no means a complete list, just some of the few trends that I think will predominantly change the way we design digital experiences in the coming year, to make users tick. And stick.
Designing for the mobile first
Globally, mobile traffic accounts for almost 50% of all web traffic. With Google prioritising mobile page load speed as a key metric in determining a site’s ranking and as much as 94% of organic search traffic coming through Google, mobile-first design is only becoming more and more crucial.
Mobile-first design is a bit of a no-brainer. I come from a time when all web design began for the desktop first. We would primarily use Photoshop, and then adapt desktop screens for mobile. That was a straightforward process of adaptation, but with a mobile-first approach we arrive at designs entirely differently, looking more closely at mobile phone usage, mobile trends and functionality to lead the way.
Scrollytelling/Storytelling will die a slow death
Scrollytelling was widely touted as a leading trend in 2022. But contrary to popular belief, I strongly believe the storytelling and the brochureware approach will make way for websites that look and feel like products. Increased mobile phone usage just means we’ll have to design smaller screens to pack a bigger punch – digestible information, larger clickable areas, minimal text, more cards. Listing a company’s promotional material, telling stories in a linear sequence is simply not cutting it and we’ll have to design for effectiveness rather than storytelling.
Docked navigation
What I’m essentially saying is websites will increasingly have to look and behave like products. Website navigation will have to go beyond just a means to flow through the pages on a site, and also do the work of highlighting and prioritizing information effectively.
- Mega menus will replace hamburger menus to declutter sites with many subpages and menus, and push relevant information up front
- Search will move to the bottom for clearer visibility
- Notifications will possibly move to the bottom too, given thumb-driven usage
We’re already beginning to see some changes in this aspect with search bars moving to the bottom of screens. Hamburger menus though heavily used were seen as a clever space-saving solution, but they’re not without limitation, mainly their inherent tendency to obscure data, which can be skipped given our increased thumb-heavy scrolling habits on a mobile phone. I envisage more and more docked navigation will be preferred over hamburger menus, which will be used minimally, if at all.
Limited side scrolling
We rely quite heavily on horizontal cards and carousels to optimise space at the moment. But in designing for the mobile-first, we’ll have to cater to reduced levels of patience in users who are used to scrolling in one direction – usually vertically – when predominantly using apps. So horizontal cards may cause blind spots, information getting lost and the full impact of the website reduced. We’ll likely see scrolling styles of the kind Instagram employs – up and down OR right and left – rarely expecting users to do both at any given time.
Animated text
Animated, dynamic content is going to lead the way in a pretty significant manner. We’ve seen this in action with the use of subtle animated interactivity with cursors, buttons and links. And we’ve seen how they very effectively bring delight to users as well as provide functionality by indicating an action. I think animated text will likely be an extension of this. Although it will mainly serve the need for optimisation of space on mobile screens, scrolling text over captions and buttons will also ensure less information is missed.
Data that empower users
Whether it’s a measure of screen time, hours spent on a particular app, number of orders successfully fulfilled by a website, total amount spent on purchases across a period of time etc, letting users know about their usage, patterns in how they spend their money, details about their content preferences, and other data like this has shown to impact future engagement. I anticipate screens that fulfill this function – collating and presenting information to give users a fuller picture – will no longer be a delightful nice-to-have feature but a necessity from the get go. This product design trend will see us designing carefully thought through features and screens for these, than having adding them as an afterthought in 2023 and beyond.
Apple does this effectively with their screen time dashboard/manager.
We’ve also seen similar data presented by Spotify calculating the hours spent listening to music and podcasts and the split of genres in a given year.
Providing data like this is already common and expected with fitness and health apps like Clue, cultfit, Strava, but we’ll potentially see this becoming more and more common across the spectrum.In an earlier blog about app features that would be great additions to Swiggy, I wrote about “Swiggy Stats”. The list included various statistical data such as spending trends, savings (through their membership program), restaurants with highest and lowest charges (including surcharge, delivery and packing charges), favourite restaurants within an area, that would be useful for power users. In the same vein we’ll see payment apps also providing expense tracking data.
Voice commands on the rise
Given the significant uptake of AI-based voice assistants, especially like Alexa, Apple home pod and Google Nest, the fundamentals of how we interact with devices is dramatically shifting. Voice-activated interfaces may not yet be very common on the average app you fire up, but going forward we may see a rise in this.
Quite simply, we’ll have to accommodate for users who choose to verbally ask a question/command over typing it. Asking out loud, whether to seek information, search, browse, buy or purchase, means we’ll need to design keeping in mind virtual assistants and voice-led interaction. Zomato already uses voice recording as a feature for customers to leave instructions for their delivery partners. Another example is Duolingo, where you can take parts of the course without even typing
The user is at the centre of the design trends shifting and as always, the changes we see will be informed by the user’s changing needs. A mobile-first approach, voice commands, AI, while also prioritising clear information flow, ease of use and effectiveness will lead the way in 2023.