Where Will UX Design Be in 5 Years?

{ 🤖 } – UX Knowledge for a Designer to Stay Up-to-Date

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No one could imagine the sudden change in people’s lives in 2020. The same happens in the Tech. You hear about new device releases or new libraries for programmers. All this affects your design work.

Every day changes are routine to UX designers already. You read design blogs, the latest Tech news, and inspire by Elon Musk or other Tech influencers. By doing so, you take and advantage of other UX designers.

If you know what might happen or how things will change, you know what to do. Knowing how UX design might transform in the closest five years brings you knowledge before these changes come into actual life.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Many people want to automate their work. In the past couple of years, bots were very trending. There were separate UX designers whose focus was on designing bots only.

As you know, technology continues to develop. In 2020 people had the ability to automate their working processes and have a smart tool. This led to the new trend — artificial intelligence (AI).

In 2021 AI automation tools will continue to be trending for UX designers. More and more commercial companies want to have AI in their services.

For example, Logojoy offers an AI-based logo design service.

For UX designers, it means creating products freshly. In the next five years, AI will be a standard for many products, so it’s time to adapt your design solutions.

I already work with an AI-based company myself and create the whole marketing tool based on AI. The first thing you need to know is how to explain your user’s interaction between them and the product.

When you work with AI, you work with complicated products most of the time.

If I look at my current company, they have an AI marketing tool. To use it, the user needs to go through the questionnaire first. It’ll help AI specify users’ requirements.

Once the user is onboarded, there are multiple explanations on how to use the product.

The same you can apply in your designs. Rather than just read about AI, try to understand how you can implement the X feature. Another thing to think about is how to make your product easy to use.

In the next five years, AI will develop more and more, so it’s time to adapt your design skills to a new level.

Voice User Interfaces (VUIs)

Once people understood automation with AI saves a lot of time, they want more such tools. The more time-saving tools a UX designer can propose, the better.

For interaction with any product, people first clicked on buttons physically. The next stage was the touch screen, where people got the ability to swipe, move, click without pressure.

It’s time to come to a new level. UX designers start to implement voice user interfaces (VUIs). I wouldn’t say that VUIs is an update of recent years. You already know about Siri and similar voice assistants.

You might think where is an update here.

The truth is UX designers started to design VUIs everywhere on the app products. It’s totally different from Siri. If you use Siri, you click and say what you want to find. Siri will find it, and you get results.

With VUIs in mobile apps, you have much more freedom and abilities. It’s time to talk to your app about what to do.

Let’s imagine you created a cooking app.

Your user found an amazing recipe and going to the kitchen to cook it. He or she can’t touch the mobile phone with dirty hands. Many people find this problem when they try to cook unknown dishes and follow the exact steps.

This is the perfect example of when it’s better to use voice instead of physical interaction with your app.

UX designers can apply this principle to many products. It’s not the only problem-solving solution, but an outstanding example of time-saving. People can interact with your app or web product and save time. It’s much faster to talk about what to do than finding the button and click physically.

With VR and AR development, VUIs will get an enormous development in the next 5 years. Using a voice will be as routine as using touch today.

New Market

Many people started to work remotely in 2020. Especially UX designers. You don’t feel a difference whether you work in an office or from home. You use your Mac or PC to deliver your products.

While working remotely was something new for some people, many specialists work remotely worldwide. In the next five years, remote work is going to be more and more popular.

UX designers understood that working at home brings benefits to them.

As a result, people from the USA, Europe, and Asia may collaborate remotely. It means that a lot of different cultures, visions, and markets are going to mix.

This will be a new level of products. When it comes to design and culture, you might find a lot of differences. One country uses the black color as a death symbol; the other uses it as a celebration. And this is only one example.

In the next five years, a lot of unique minds and cultures are going to mix. It’s a perfect time to learn about different cultures to understand how people think and interact with products. Your design decisions are always based on psychology and people’s mind.

The better you know your users, the better app and web products you’re going to design.

Additionally, working remotely will bring a lot of novel ways of interaction between UX designers. It worth start checking what tools allow you to do this and learn them.

Final Thoughts

UX designers create app and web products based on today’s technology and how people use it. It’s important to be up-to-date with information to create stunning designs.

In the next five years, your design solutions will be affected by today’s trends. These are AI and VUIs. With the rise of remote work, markets are going to mix. It means you need to learn about different people’s mindset.

Start to get new knowledge today and apply it to your designs. Be among the designers for your better future.


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Olha Bahaieva Avatar

Olha Bahaieva / UI/UX Designer, Medium Author, Public Speaker @ Toptal

Olha Bahaieva is a senior UI/UX designer, Medium author and public speaker at Toptal.

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