Mobile application design: 5 UX design trends for 2016
Application development world is very competitive. The industry is developing by leaps and bounds, so companies when creating an app have to keep up with the times.
Now it’s especially important to follow trends, modify tools, approaches, and so on, otherwise, you will lose. And one of the main parts developers must pay attention to is application interface design.
Today a quality UX design is essential to create and improve user engagement, by providing them with delight, emotions, user-friendliness, and intuitive interaction with the app.
Mobile application design
Over the past few years, mobile application UX design has been continuing to stay one of the most important UX design trends as well as a key trend in mobile application development.
The number of smartphones is increasing at a rapid pace, resulting in a growing number of mobile apps and the highest (than ever) competition between them. So, today designers are especially focused on mobile first design paying a lot of attention to creating the engaging user experience.
Mobile app design – the latest UX trends
1. User-friendly mobile apps
User-friendliness continues to stay one of the key UX design trends for this year. Moreover, currently, it’s one of the most important requirements for mobile application design. For example, designers are concentrated on voice-based commands, which can be also considered as a separate mobile app development trend that appeared in 2015.
2. Simple apps – say no to heaviness!
Soon mobile app developers will be creating single-purpose applications with a simple and engaging application interface design. And products with a lot of features will take back seat.
Sounds surprising? At first sight yes.
Surely, we all love beautiful and quality applications that have rich functionality. However, statistics show that we use only 30% of features while other 70% (!) stay neglected.
That’s why 2016 is the year of simple apps. It means that apps will be created to complete several main functions, so mobile interface designs will be more focused. A great example of such a single-purpose application is Facebook Messenger created specifically for the network users to exchange messages.
3. Design of responsive interfaces including user behavior
For the past few years, the mobile app development industry has become more advanced. At present moment companies are in conditions of high competition, and in order to become a leader in a certain domain, they (while creating the app) have to be very critical to user-friendly mobile interface design.
So, in 2016 designers will place great emphasis on the development of more responsive application interface designs.
Analysts predict that this year there will be a shift in the meaning of responsive design. In 2016 it will include user behavior: how your audience is interacting with app content, what they’ve clicked on and how quickly, what triggers some questions and hesitations, what is bounce rate, and so on.
And we move to analytical tools such as AppsFlyer, Localytics, Flurry, and others that allow to analyze user behavior and create and improve products based on thoughtful research.
Thus, today it’s essential to develop mobile interface designs customizing them to the needs and preferences of your target audience.
4. Personalized user experience
One of the key mobile app UX design trends in 2106 is delivering personalized user experience. More and more companies nowadays are discovering the value of customization, the possibility to provide users with a customized and engaging experience that leads to generating profit.
Personalized experience has been getting great popularity and currently it’s becoming one of the main parts of brand loyalty creation as well as brand recognition.
The key to success for businesses here is to adjust user experience to meet the needs and preferences of the certain target audience. So we back to analytiсal tools that help define how your target audience reacts on one or another application interface design, and then customize the user experience.
5. Technology stack and skills
Analysts predict that mobile app UX design will be more and more difficult to tell apart, as now the boundaries of a digital product are getting increasingly blurry.
Today we are observing the fast development of the Internet of things and its implementation in practically all industries and spheres of life.
And this process includes the appearance and spread of IoT apps that provide lots of opportunities for their users, for example, allow to manage home lighting, monitor traffic, and see the best route to a certain place based on a real-time situation.
So, fast development of technologies leads to further development and enhancement of mobile application design tools and techniques. In 2016 a UX designer must have strong technical skills, follow trends of not only design and mobile applications development, but also technologies on the whole.
We believe that beautiful and responsive application interface design is essential for product success. We use Usability+User experience formula and make impressive modern designs.