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Find Out What Is Trending in Web Design This Time of Year
Web Design

Find Out What Is Trending in Web Design This Time of Year

by Adrian Ababei on Jan 06 2017
Curious what 2017 has in store for you in terms of new powerful web design trends? It is crucial for you, as an entrepreneur or business owner operating in the online world to “tell the future”, isn't it? 
 
Well, allow us to be your “fortune tellers”!
 
To reveal to you 3 web design trends that will dominate the web design industry this month and which we anticipate that we'll “dictate” how designers and business owners will approach web design this year.
 
Ready?
 
Here are the most influencing trends in web design in January 2017:

 

1. Crafting Visually-Appealing Shopping Experiences 

 
Stunning imagery + (unique) story telling products = new shopping experiences based on planting the “seed of desire” in your viewers!
 
That's how we could call these new shopping experiences that (usually) high-end online stores, with fewer items on their inventories, have started to craft.
 
We already “suspect” it to become one of the most influencing of all the 3 web design trends that we've selected for you for this post! Definitely the trend that will influence how we do web design in Toronto!
 
So, you'd better give it a great deal of consideration if you own a Drupal e-commerce website or if you're planning to boost your business with one such website this year.
 
It might just be the surest way of setting yourself apart from all the common shops offering clunky shopping experiences, requiring to much clicking from their visitors, annoying them with too many options to select from and with over-sized navigation menus. 
 
Set yourself apart and join the high end shops' exclusive league instead!
 
The league of those brands that focus on the pure beauty of their products and that masterfully showcase it to their users triggering a sense of desire in them. All while while making sure that their online shopping experience is seamless (take Amazon's example for instance).
 
It's no news to anyone: Instagram has influenced and will continue to influence the way digital business owners approach to web design in 2017. 
 
So, bid on visually-arresting images, on card-style interfaces and remember to invest your products with a unique story (your brand's unique story) to “tell” your website's visitors!
 
First you visually dazzle them away with your high end design and it's only afterwards, once they've started to scroll down, that you reveal to them all the other “details” such as prices.
 
This is how major brands have been “charming” their customers with great success, so how about adapting their techniques to your own website?
 
Instill that sense of “gotta have this high-end, beautifully designed and unique story-telling product” in your website's visitors!

 

2. Using Ample Negative Space for Directing Viewer's Eye

 
When used right, the web design technique of "playing with" an ample “empty” space is such a powerful one!
 
Whether we're talking about the “empty” space that you'll decide to surround your images or text with, or about the background color or simply the strategically placed white space on your website, this “airy” space on your website lacking any visual elements can help you direct your visitors' attention to key elements on your web pages.

 
You'll practically guide the viewer's eye to the more “crowded” part of your design. You'll actually “tell” your users where to look and where to click! 
 
Note: when considering the use of ample negative space, think beyond (commonly) symmetrical design! Get creative and strive to strike a visually impacting balance between text or images and negative space in a rather asymmetrical format.

 

3. Breathing Life In Material Designs Using Pastel Colors 

 
Get ready to witness a shift in the usage of colors in web design this year!
 
If bold, neon colors have been “the go-for trend” in 2016, we've been collecting some “solid proofs” that pastel hues will steal the spotlight this year! As a Toronto web designer or entrepreneur operating in the digital “realm”, you should definitely keep an eye on how this trend will continue to evolve over the year!
 
Softer colors will climb the colors' hierarchy, going from (just) background colors to hero headers'/main imagery's dominating colors.
 
Expect to witness more and more brands (and you should seriously consider jumping on this trend yourself, too):
 
  • pairing pastel colors with images featuring the same soft hues
  • pairing photography with imagery featuring the same pastel palettes
 
Note: pastel colors will continue to perfectly complement material and flat designs as they've had over the last years, too.
 
So from this point of view there's nothing new under the sun in 2017's web designs! And yet, softer colors won't be playing just a “secondary” role, somewhere in the background.
 
Designers will start matching and pairing them in various ways for putting together the central images themselves.
 
Therefore, you'd better start considering playing some more with pastel color palettes when designing or redesigning your Drupal website/s this year. 

 
 
What do you think? Will these 3 web design trends, that have influenced designers more than other trends this month, turn into THE most powerful ones this year?
 
Which one(s) of them (if any) is it more likely to “influence” you, too, when you develop the web projects that you've planned for 2017?
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Let's dive in: Stage 1: How to Approach User Experience Design: Ground Your Work in User Research   “What is the first step of a UX design process?” you ask?  Get to know your target customers as much as possible. What type of people will be using your app? What are their motivations, behaviors, needs, and goals? Designed with "Make My Persona". And having just “an idea” is not enough. It's at this stage of the process where you gather and analyze as much data as possible on your app's target users: run some web analytics take user interviews conduct online surveys put together your user persona profile, which is no more than an archetypal representation of your target users (their goals and behaviors) that helps you validate all your future design decisions Dive deep into all the data you've collected so far and start looking for patterns and trends. It's these common patterns that'll help you distill this huge pile of data and see who the “average user” for your product is.   Stakeholders involved UX design team Deliverables: usability studies user personas user stories Stage 2: Define the Problem That the User Is Having “What are the most important things to understand throughout a UX design process?” The problem that you're trying to solve with your product. And why solving that problem would be beneficial to your business. In other words, how the user’s problem aligns with your business goals. Articulating a clear problem statement is one of the UX design process best practices. Figure out what the user needs (or what problem he's dealing with) and plan out your product as a solution to those needs. For example: It's not a shopping cart that your online store's customers NEED. What they need is an overview of the items they've selected and of their total cost. The shopping cart is the solution to precisely these 2 customer needs.  Here are 4 helpful questions to focus on: What problem do we want to solve? What are our users' needs and why are these particular needs important to them? Are there any existing or anticipated limitations to address? What are the benchmarks for success? Source: uxdesign.cc Stakeholders involved product manager product design team Deliverables: a clear user-need statement that includes: a user, his problem or need, and his goal storyboards customer journey map Stage 3: Do Some UX Competitive Analysis  Who are your competitors? And what approaches have they adopted for their own products? How are they different/better than yours? How well do other software products, with similar features, perform? This is that stage of the process where you run extensive research on: your target market your competitors the latest UX/UI trends Stakeholders involved design team  Deliverables: market research competitor analysis Stage 4: Sketch Out a Wireframe    Another valid answer to your dilemma — “How to approach user experience design” —  is:  You put together a low-fidelity wireframe for your software product. It'll be the link between: your app's/website's visual design and its information architecture And it's also a quick and effective way to get your idea across all the teams involved. At this stage you: brainstorm ideas  explore possible solutions to that user's problem/need that you've identified in stage 2 (and hopefully come up with a better solution than your competition)  explore several ways of displaying different types of content and information identify the content that you need to prioritize, according to how important it is for the user journey No need to invest too much time (and creativity) into something too detailed. Whiteboard photos, pencil sketches on paper will do since at this point you'll be focusing exclusively on: the main functionality the user experience … on every screen Stakeholders involved design team Deliverables: user flows hand-drawn sketches wireframes sitemap lots and lots of sticky notes with ideas written on, that you can sort by hierarchy and group by theme Stage 5: Create a Prototype Another one of the UX design process best practices to follow. That's because you'll want to have a draft version of your product that users could test before you do any coding. The great thing about prototypes is that they simulate the real experience — you touch the “Next” button and it takes you to the next screen— so that testers can have a real feel of how the real app will function. They get to experience its design in... real-time. Stakeholders involved design team Deliverables: paper prototype design images icons design specifications such as colors, typography, theme, guidelines, styles low-fidelity prototype high-fidelity prototype interactive prototype Stage 6: Have It Tested by Real Users  How to approach user experience design? You collect as much feedback as possible on your product prototype. And here are 3 battle-tested methods: usability testing remote user testing A/B testing And you sure don't run short of means to make the most of user testing: from simple observations to surveys to questionnaires  to interviews … there are “n” ways to get your valuable feedback from real users. Deliverables: user feedback usability report analytics report audit reports on the prototype's UI lists of areas that need improvement (or features that should be removed/replaced) Stage 7: Develop and Launch Time to bring the developers in! Now it's their time to shine. To implement the designs and: structure the database build the server build the back end functionality tie the back-end to the UI  One of the UX design process best practices to follow here is having the design team... stick around. They might need to intervene and make small tweaks to their design or simply to communicate any issues that arise while developers are implementing it. Stakeholders involved development team design team Deliverables:  a high fidelity version of the user interface with functionality and user experience baked in Stage 8: Evaluate  Time for a new round of... analysis. And here are a couple of questions to guide your evaluation process: How do users respond to our product? Do they find it easy to use? Where does it get it right, in terms of user experience, and where does it... fail? Does it manage to solve their problems/meet their needs? Stakeholders product manager design team Deliverables: new feature ideas that might need to get implemented lists of issues reported Final Word: The UX Design Process Comes Down to Learn.Think. Make So, to give you a final answer to your question — “How to approach user experience design?”: Many of the stages included in our process are debatable and perfectly... optional (i.e. you might feel like skipping the wireframing part if you have a solid design system set in place). Feel free to swap stages in and out and to adjust the process to your own business, your teams, and your specific project requirements. What you should not consider as optional is the 9th step in designing the user experience that I haven't included here: The UX design process is an... ongoing one. You'll need to constantly improve and to polish your designs to fit new circumstances, new contexts, future user challenges... No UX experts in your team to hand over all these tasks to? We're here to help! Just drop us a line and let's design the best user experience for your app/website. Image by William Iven from Pixabay ... Read more
Adriana Cacoveanu / Aug 24'2020

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