Translator: Shao Ruiqi
The original link: https://blog.figma.com/18-designers-predict-ui-ux-trends-for-2018-2d04d41361c6
Designers are always moving in the direction of the future — in our “build and sail” industry, we are looking to iterate on products further. In the end, designers always come back to a simple question: How can we improve the user experience?
With that in mind, Figma asked 18 designers for their UI/UX trends predictions for 2018.
We’ve chosen designers from a variety of sources: attendees of last month’s Figma-sponsored Design Systems dinner, speakers at this year’s Clarity conference, and friends of the Figma family. You’ll get input from designers at Facebook, Google, and Airbnb. We also collected 61 great and thoughtful responses from Twitter.
Like a collective brain, many designers touch on similar topics, from ease of use to ethical responsibility to collaborative design.
1. Ease of use first, self-awareness second
“I really want 2018 to be the year that designers design with ease in mind. We need to stop using super-light grey as a base element, we need to stop making every pixel dynamic just for design’s sake, and we need to stop making it harder for people to understand what’s on the page because we want to prove that we’re designers.”
— Hubert Florin, product designer at Slack
2. Design in collaboration needs to adapt to programming
“Whether designers program or not, I think design teams are going to start working together more like development teams. This may include design reviews similar to code reviews, where development tool-like design tools will play a greater role in open source design patterns. What would software look like if all open source engineering projects had industry-standard designs that drive user experience or information design?
— Jules Forrest, Senior product Designer, Credit Karma
3. Designers need to pay more attention to ethical responsibility
“My hope in 2018 is that UX/UI designers will become more aware of their influence and better consider the ethical differences in design choices of the people who use their products when designing.”
— Tim Belonax, chief designer, Pinterest
4. Designers rely too much on industry standards
“Unfortunately, I predict that designers will increasingly rely on design specification systems (i.e., components, processes) rather than question them. “
— Johan Ronsse, UI/UX designer and partner at Mono Design
5. More efficient and responsible
“In 2018, I think we’ll see an increasing convergence of design and development tools, with more integrated tools helping to design and build systems to work with whatever technology or platform you need. We’ll see CSS grids, custom variables, and frameworks like Vue and React bring new possibilities and efficiencies to design implementations — which I hope will create more time for more responsible design and build more inclusive experiences.
— Diana Mounter, GitHub Design Systems Manager
6. We’ll ignore that we all need a trend
“We all need a trend towards design for ease of use and inclusive design. There is a lot of work in this area but almost no one wants to implement it. # the org.eclipse.swt.accessibility”
Matthew Morek, UI/UX design consultant
7. Design will be a major player in social change
“The most important design is the design that solves the real problems of humanity. Moving forward, I see design playing an important role in how we solve major problems in our society. Design will become more political, more accessible, and will cause real change. “
— Michelle Morrison, Design project manager at Facebook
8. Design tools will make everyone a designer
“Modern design tools will become more accessible and more people will be able to contribute to the design process on a level playing field. We will see “designer” less as an isolated role and design as a career for more ordinary people. “
— Noah Levin, Design Manager, Figma
9.Jason Schwartzman said it best
“May I speak my mind? Huckabees? The interconnected stuff is absolutely real.”
Zachary Gibson, Creative director of materials design at Google
10. It’s time to reflect on yourself
“In the last few years, we’ve given a lot of attention to the word ’empathy.’ Next we need to bring up ‘ego.’ Many people still feel uncomfortable thinking about “non-designers” and find that their best designs end up being 90% other people’s input (or more) and 10% of their own ideas (or less), but the most successful teams and companies learn this about design early on.
– Nicole Tollefson, Atlassian Buyer Experience lead designer
11. People’s skills are more important than ever
“It’s becoming more and more important to hone our talent skills — it’s still important amid so many changes. This means that we will listen and collaborate more to ensure that a variety of cross-team voices are heard in our work and that the best environment is available to achieve the best outcomes. Underneath every technical problem is a human problem.”
“– Twitter designer and producer Josh Silverman
12. Now is the time to respond dynamically to your environment
“I see a future where design is more integrated into the real world. Whether it’s through hardware sensors, alternate reality, or context-driven user interfaces, designers have to understand design life off-screen. The design will react dynamically to its surroundings and take full advantage of hardware capabilities.”
— Linda Dong, design manager at Lyft
13. Better design tools will lead to better branding through design systems
“As tools cater to the prevailing winds of design systems, it will become easier to collaborate and interpret brand representations through design systems. This will enable designers to work with higher fidelity early in the product process – improving decisions and reducing the cost of producing great digital work.”
Lucas Smith, Design technologist at Airbnb
14. Design systems to serve people, not products
“The next big shift in design requires us to design systems as services rather than products. We tend to think of designing systems as “products of service products,” but I think this is detrimental to relationships, negotiation, compromise, and human interaction in such challenging and highly rewarding systems work.”
-Daniel Eden, product designer at Facebook
15. Designing systems is only going to become more important
“We will continue to see the rise of design systems in response to design teams expanding, modularizing, and relying more on machine learning and AI-based content. Designers will arm programming with recognition and algorithmic thinking skills to meet more needs.”
“– Jerel Johnson, Senior product Designer, Backpack Health
Graphic design will no longer be a focus
“I think we’re going to see more interface ideas over the next year as we move from two-dimensional static design to interactive design.”
Una Kravets, Senior UI engineer, DigitalOcean
17. The design system will bridge the differences between departments
“Next year’s design trends will definitely include the growth of design systems, just like this year. More and more companies are learning the benefits of systematic design, especially how it will bridge the gap between product, design and engineering. In addition, I think 3D modeling and 3D visualization will continue to be popular. “You can imagine that for this reason, displaying UI in greater depth will be the new trend.”
– Isha Kasliwal, Twitch senior UI/UX designer/developer
18. Improvements in CSS will affect web design in amazing ways
“There’s a lot of excitement in CSS — integrating new tools like grids and custom properties with existing features like Calc and Viewport units. CSS now visualizes interactions, responses, and data that previously required extensive use of JavaScript. I’m excited to see more new trends in this technology. “
Miriam Suzanne, designer and developer of OddBird
