Latest UX/UI Designing Trends in Mobile App Development in 2021 That Users Will Love

Author(s): Sophia Martin

Originally published on Towards AI.

Designing and developing a mobile application seems to be the most straightforward task for experts. Still, the truth is, there is nothing harder than crafting an app with excellent UI/UX design that can help increase user engagement.

It won’t be wrong to say, UX/UI is the backbone of any app, either it can make or break the user experience.

Hold on, are you assuming UX and UI the same concept? It is a horrible mistake that you are making right now!

Both of these terms means different. While User Experience(UX) refers to what kind of experience you get while accessing the mobile application, whereas User Interface is the visual appearance of your app, you must hear the everyday slang that most professionals used “a good UX of a product but a poor UI of the website.”

I hope this information will remove a fog over a concept that makes you confused all the time.

Before start discussing the top UX/UI design trends that will rule in 2021, Let’s understand the essential difference between UX and UI…

Basics Difference Between User Experience(UX) and User Interface(UI)

While it comes to mobile app development, UX and UX are the two most common terms that simultaneously used throughout the development process. On the one spectrum, UX design is nothing but an abbreviation of “User Experience Design,” and on other UI stands for “User Interface Design.” Might be these terms sound similar, but professionally they both work differently.

Let me define you each term separately to avoid creating a bubble of confusion here!

What is User Experience(UX)?

The landscape of User Experience design is to achieve the highest level of satisfaction of the users. It majorly includes how users will feel while interacting with an application.

To create an excellent UX Design, a mobile app developer has to understand the user’s perspective and seek out feedback from the tester to fix the issues and provide a perfect solution to the users.

According to Alan Cooper, the famous software designer and programmer, “If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.”

What is the User Interface(UI)?

Alan Cooper says “No matter how cool your interface is; it would be better if there were less of it”.

User Interface is all about the visual appearance of the app that includes various elements such as button, tags, text, images, videos, drop-down list, graphic design, and user’s click.

While User Interface refers to a process that ensures how things will work, therefore, UI designer needs to layout a mobile app design that helps in attracting the eye of the user and provide a seamless product experience.

Both UX/UI is the most integral part of mobile app development, and no one wants to experience a poor design. It has been observed with the UX Planet case study, “Fixing a problem in development cost ten times as much as fixing it in design, and 100 times as much if you’re trying to fix the issues in a product that’s already been released”.

So, What Makes a Great UX/UI Design in Mobile App Development?

There are multiple factors that need to focus while designing a mobile application with a great UX/UI design. But keep in the fundamental thing “Without UX, there is no use of UI.”

While there are no such parameters to keep in mind for the ideal UX design in mobile app development, but it can be determined by learning how long users spend time on the app. whereas UI design is about the engagement of the user in an app.

That’s not all!

As we have already entered in 2021, so why to evaluate the UX/UI design trends to develop a mobile application with the former rules. So what are the significant UX/UI design trends 2021 that will dominate the industry in the future:

6 Proposed UX/UI Design Trends That Every Designer Should Watch Out in 2021

1. Prepare App for Voice Search Revolution

With the launch of Intelligent Voice Assistants, including- Apple’s “Siri,” Google’s “Alexa,” performing your regular tasks, has become far more comfortable and more straightforward.

Right from ordering your favorite food to buying daily necessary groceries, controlling smart appliances to finding any information, all has become just a matter of voice command to your IA device.

According to statistics, 1 in 5 adult-use mobile voice search at least once monthly, and 100 million smartphone users are predicted to use voice searches. And businesses can’t ignore this fact longer. Instead, solely relying on the traditional approaches to tailor the user experience, it has become an urgent need for enterprises to adopt voice searches in a mobile app to deliver maximum comfort and convenience to the user. The integration of VUI in mobile apps will also assist businesses in meeting the future needs of the market.

But, it won’t be as simple as downloading a plugin to add more features to your site. Designers used to face several roadblocks in the pavement of voice searches. To do it correctly, it is best to hire a mobile app development company that will replace the old techniques with the new mindsets of design.

2. Less Coding is Better Coding

As Steve Job says, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”.

As per the latest UX/UI design trends, developers need to be creative enough with the less use of coding in UI design. It seems like, 2021 is reshaping the UI trend. So at the stage of app development, here are a few things that you need to observe to boost the UX design of the app.

Never overflooded the user with push notifications and pop-ups.

It is mindful of implementing a feature that tracks the browsing history of the users.

Keep a typical navigation pattern to avoid muddling the user.

On one side of the flip, less use of coding will speed up the app designing process, on the other hand, minimized coding make your app compatible for 5G and 4G networks. The new structure will improve mobile connectivity, hence, improving the smartphone experience. Less coding will make your app works faster, and users will notice a significant improvement in data transfer speed and latency.

3. Say Yes To Dark Themes

Are you still draining the efforts on customizing the colorful app themes with the hope to increase user engagement and help them navigate different sections more conveniently?

Wake up! You are in 2021; you need to be smarter to tie users to your app!

According to the 2021 UX/UI design trends, dark mobile app themes are the hot selling trends. You must be wondering how it can help you. Basically, dark themes are considered as the low-light UI design that comes along with two benefits. First, they save battery power by minimizing the use of light pixels, secondly give considerable relief to your eyes by eliminating the risk of changing the brightness of the screen in different colors.

4. Full-Screen Flat Navigations

Did you ever notice any difference between shopping online on Amazon eCommerce store and a local store? Don’t you find everything well categorized, sorted, and convenient to browse on Amazon?

If yes, then this is called seamless navigation!

The way you design app navigation can dramatically affect the user experience of the app. And this is what Amazon online store leverage to boost the UX.

As gone are those days when users access small screens. Instead, modern smartphones with bigger screens can manage more content, although, in a sorted way. From categorizing the navigation in a thumb style, positioning the key objects in a simple list to simply adopting the swipe-up style, there are various ways to tailor the experience of the targeted audience.

5. Let’s Chat With AI-Driven Chatbots

Those were the days of the past when customers used to call customer care or write query emails. In this digitized era, everyone is expecting an instant solution for issues, and that’s where chatbots come into a role to add 24*7 assistance to the customers and giving peace of mind to the business.

For processing every particular query, chatbots are the perfect option to manage it easily in all basic language variations. Being based on Artificial Intelligence, chatbots can easily understand different language semantics, emotions, slang words, phrases, and text structures, and respond accordingly.

To improve the UX design of the app, you need to outsource software development companies that can help integrate the perfect set of robots, a voice that empowers your brand personality, typing indicators, buttons, and so on.

Enhance the UI design by adding auto-complete function, ready-made conversation flow to make your users understand how simple it is easy to access.

6. Cater Better UX/UI for Disabled Users

Across the population, there are people with situational, permanent, and temporary disabilities. To enhance the app experience of all these people, you need to walk in the shoes of users to understand problems with their disabilities.

For example, for blind people or having a low vision, develop an app design that helps them UI elements and text read aloud, and offers vibration feedback.

While there is a wide range of technical skills are required to develop such advanced applications. Still, with the help of a software development company, you can create an app that helps you produce more available products for users.

Ending Note

If you are into the mobile app development industry and looking forward to ways to uplift the experience of the users with an app, then you need to watch out the latest UX/UI trends that will rule in the future.

As the technology is changing with each passing year, you not only need to revamp user’s interaction, behaviors, and preferences, but also make some changes in the visual appearance of the application.

With the change of time, technology is advancing and bring the latest trends in the mobile app development industry. So this blog has listed some of the top trends that empower UX/UI design in mobile app development and help in enhancing user experience.

While user experience encompasses all aspects of the end user’s interaction with a company, it services, and its products, so it has become imperative for businesses to keep their eyes ahead on the popular trends that will rule in 2021.

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Published via Towards AI