User Interface Design Trends

There are basically two Design Trends that we will see in the years to come. These are;

• Emotional design and persuasive architecture: Usability and user-centered design have become mature industries. Cognitive science informs usability—there is a solid body of knowledge about how people think, remember, and perceive their environment. We have proven principles and heuristics to design technology interfaces to match human cognition. Thousands of people worldwide are skilled and experienced at applying these principles to interface evaluation and design.

• Designing for different generation: We all know that the baby boomer generation is aging, and there are plenty of guidelines for how to design technology interfaces for aging populations. But did you know there is a demographic that is even larger than the baby boomer demographic? It’s the children of the boomers! This “Net Generation” is huge. While their reaction to technology interfaces is similar to boomers in some ways, it is very different in many others. The generation between the Net Generation and the boomers is Generation X. Gen Xers are unlike both boomers and the Net Gen in their use of technology. They are a much smaller demographic, but interestingly they are most often the ones designing interfaces for everybody else. If you design for the Gen Xers then you will miss critical design needs that the boomers expect. Furthermore, these are different from the design needs of the Net Generation! To be an interface designer in 2008 means you need to understand how four different generations perceive information, how they think, how they process information, and what they expect from technology. You have to design in such a way that one or more (whichever are in your target population) can and will want to use the interface, website, device or product you are creating.

Take care of these two things and you will succeed in providing your customers the best they can get now.