In the design world, changes seem to occur at lightning speed! While it’s great that the industry is changing and developing, it can spell a lot of trouble for small businesses that may find it hard to keep up. To succeed and grow in this industry, small businesses must keep an eye on new trends to not only equip themselves with the best problem-solving tools and ensure they are ready to face any challenge that comes their way, but also, guarantee they are producing fresh, engaging and relevant products customers will buy.
If you want to improve how you acquire new customers, sell your products or services, deliver better user experience and convert more leads, then read on!
Augmented Reality
Remember the 2016 Pokemon Go craze? Pokemon went viral with a genius idea of bringing their creatures to life, making people travel all over the world just to find and capture the best Pokemon. Using graphics and sounds, Pokemon Go transformed the world as we knew it. The augmented reality provided a fun, highly engaging user experience by including elements of the virtual world into the real world.
Augmented reality, changes not only, how users interact with products, but also the design process. Unlike flat design, there are a lot more factors that product designers must take into consideration as they transform an existing environment and overlay virtual information, to create the illusion of mixed reality and virtual reality.
Let’s take a look at the Dream Reality Interactive games platform. They specialize in creating immersive games emphasizing their users’ experience. Their first augmented reality game, Orbu, presented players with the ability to control a creature, navigate it around their current environment, and discover clues and hidden items – all while interacting with the real world, sounds cool, right?
Recent advances in augmented reality technologies, open the door to opportunities for small businesses to reach their audiences more interactively. It allows small businesses to encourage their users to view the world in a new light while interacting with their product. Thus, proving to be a great way to stand out, captivate users, and keep them coming back for more.
How do small businesses implement AR in their design?
By thinking of the interface flexible. Unlike UX, AR isn’t static, therefore you can’t design within the box, and need to ask yourself the following questions:
- How much do you want your website’s UI elements to interact with the real world?
- How many layers do you want to include in your interface?
- Do you want users to walk through objects, or the digital design to wrap around the real world?
Remember, as AR uses the world around you to present information, it’s imperative to consider various boundaries and alternative occurrences within each layer, and design accordingly – once having answered the questions above.
Microinteractions
In this digital era, where smartphones are ubiquitous, micro-interactions play a huge role. We don’t even notice them, and that’s the whole point. When designed well, take Netflix’s user experience, they are interactions we would only notice if they disappeared. Such as the navigating seamlessly through a site, pull-to-refresh, toggling between screens or notification pop-ups like calendar reminders or email snippets you can swipe away. Designers are continuously searching for areas where design and usability enhancements can improve the product experience. A little micro-interaction will truly go a long way where UX is concerned.
When it comes to product design, it’s the details that are the key to keeping users hooked and coming back for more. Micro-interactions are used to instantly communicate important information to users in a manner that doesn’t interrupt. They catch the user’s attention for a split-second to relay information engagingly, moving the user through the product experience to sign up or purchase. Ultimately, ensuring a user will use and recommend your product.
Pro-tip: when implementing these micro-interactions it’s important to remain predictable. You don’t want to end up confusing and frustrating the user. They are called micro-interactions for a reason so stick to a pattern. Also, keep them visually engaging, but don’t let them dominate, you’ll find they end up being too distracting and hinder the user experience.
Check out DesignCrowd’s icon design gallery for thousands of micro-interaction graphics. Dribble also features creative micro-interaction examples for you to enjoy.
What are some best practices for implementing micro-interactions?
- Keep the user feeling in control by designing and creating a micro-interaction with a fast response time.
- Create micro-interactions with a purpose, meaning you need to create functional animations that enhances the UX, not detracts.
- Stick to a theme, you don’t want your micro-interactions to stand out and distract the users, create a unifying theme to tie together your multiple micro-interactions.
- To create detailed micro-interactions, you can check out the After Effects tool.
Want to learn more about animation? Find out what skills you’ll need to master to become a successful animator and motion designer.
The Minimalist Trend
The minimalist design trend stresses the importance of “less is more.” Designers that follow this trend believe in stripping a design down to the bare minimum and removing any unnecessary features, to produce a cleaner and more focused user experience.
When following this trend, as a general rule, if a feature a can be removed without impacting a product’s functionality, then remove it.
When users interact with a minimalist product it is simple and uncluttered user experience. They can understand the design thinking behind a product and interact with it uniquely. This approach is also documented in Eric Ries book and website Lean Startup.
Business design consultancies like Ideo or smaller product design companies like Inkod have stepped in to help. The boutique product design firm, Inkod, works together with their clients to create products that meet user needs and expectations. They define the relevance of a product to eliminate unnecessary functions and misuse of a product.
What should small businesses consider when implementing the minimalist trend?
- Remove all extra elements. Remember less is more if it doesn’t need to be there for the functionality of a product then remove it.
- Create a single focal point per screen. Don’t just strip away the unnecessary distractions and be done with it. Remember to highlight your important content too.
- Simplify the color scheme. Too many colors can have a negative impact on the overall user experience. Design a system that uses fewer than ten colors that have defined roles like purchase, error, explore, discover, etc.
In conclusion
Important trends don’t just pop up out of nowhere, they stick around because they are an answer to current user desires. It’s important for small businesses to keep up with trends and give users what they want. Whether you implement the augmented reality trend, micro-interactions, the minimalist trend, or any other into your design, you’ll find yourself thriving in this competitive market and growing your business.
This is a guest post by Shachar, who is Ranky’s Co-Founder. He dreams about Growth, wakes up to the Tweets of birds and loves Social. Ranky is a marketing agency focused exclusively on tech and startups and has helped 200 killer companies achieve their marketing goals.
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