“Creativity takes courage.” — Henri Matisse

The battle for our attention is greater than ever as rich digital content vies for millions of eyeballs. With distractions rampant, we may be reaching what is called a “peak cognitive crisis.” Images, videos, text, illustrations, animations, and podcasts overload our senses with sponsored posts, fake news, our friends’ vacation photos, Australia in flames, the city of Venice flooding, and the portent of war, all in the span of less than 10 seconds as we scroll through a social network feed.

Through the medium of this storm-millions of distractions, all competing for our attention-design trends emerge through innovation and experimentation. Trends typically form because a creative mind envisioned something, created it, people liked it, and it spread. Some trends have short lifespans, some stick around longer, and some are recycled in a few decades-witness the comeback of 60s fashion and vinyl records with Generation Z. Trends appear in many areas and disciplines: from fashion to hair, food to cars, from architecture to design, and even politics.

Trends are born out of creativity and bold experimentation. In 1960, when Margaret Vinci, a hairstyling champion, was encouraged by the editor of Modern Beauty Salon magazine to do “something really different” that would define the coming decade, she came up with the beehive hairstyle. It spread like wildfire and became a hot trend throughout the 60s. Audrey Hepburn’s beehive, which she showcased beautifully in the classic film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” is one of the most iconic examples, as was Brigitte Bardot’s disheveled take on it.

As with many innovations, designers parade their newly minted and carefully crafted creations in various media to test them and show them off. Some UX designs are genuine efforts to make things look and work better. Some are vanity projects designed to exalt the designer and have them declared design demi-gods with 10,000 likes on Dribbble -even if only for a short blip on the radar.

In the chaotic plethora of options, some designs are discarded and some are kept and grow into a UX design trend-not only with consumers but also with peers. Peers respond with a thumbs up or a thumbs down: Oooh, I like that. It looks great. It makes things work better. I like that style. Or meh, doesn’t work for me… Sometimes, overcome by symptoms of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), other designers jump on the bandwagon, broadcasting: Look, I’m hip, modern, and contemporary too! and I’m with the times, check it out, this is the latest thing.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” — Oscar Wilde

Isometric illustration has re-emerged as a 2019 UX design trend from past engineering drawing techniques.

Some UX designers may resist design trends because they don’t want to be seen as followers. Some reject design trends outright, dismissing them as fleeting fads, and stick to the principles of good design. Take the “forever minimalists,” who are sworn enemies of anything maximalist. But dissenting designers ought to realize that each style and trend has its place in the world. It’s when the wrong trend is used at the wrong time, in the wrong media, in the wrong context, that havoc ensues and people cringe.

Drawing inspiration from design trends can be useful in other ways. When the dreaded creative block paralyzes designers, gaining inspiration from design trends may help overcome it. There is nothing wrong with seeking out new sources of inspiration, as long as it doesn’t lead to mindless imitation. Being inspired by a particular design trend is a nod to its creator, acknowledging that it works, and what works will soon become a best practice, a convention, and an established design pattern.

Let’s look back at the 2019 UX design trends and highlight a dozen significant ones.

2019 UX Trend of the Year: Illustrations Everywhere

For the last couple of years, whimsical illustrations have been seeping into the digital design world but were propelled to the forefront in 2019. The trend is driven by the desire for an organic sensibility in visuals and a move away from the cold, digital, “techy look.” The movement joins forces with the recent comeback of analog media-vinyl records, vintage clothes, letterpress printing-things that are made out of actual, raw materials. People are yearning for the tangible-things that are natural, organic, and sensible.

Stock images and stock illustrations are out. From whimsical digital illustrations to black-and-white charcoal sketches, anything with an organic feel is in. Isometric illustrations are all the rage, and no skeuomorphism is allowed. It’s all about organic-looking, custom illustrations on websites and in apps, even for buttons and icons.

Lemonade’s whimsical illustrations for their website perfectly align with current UX trends.

If designers can introduce a little motion into the illustration, even better. Slow-moving, subtle animation adds an interesting element to a static illustration, making it come alive.

The latest UX trends for 2019 include slow-moving animated illustrations (Google).

Animated illustrations introduce motion and catch the visitor’s eye (source).

Illustrations, especially for onboarding sequences, have also made inroads into mobile UX design.

Mobile onboarding sequence by Daniel Tkatchenko and Pawel Olek.

Blending trends isn’t uncommon. Inventive landing pages present scroll-triggered, parallax, multimedia animations that sometimes combine animated illustrations with moving backgrounds, typography, photos, and video.

Scroll-triggered animated illustrations sell Gucci bags on the web — Gucci Zumi.

Let’s Go Dark: Dark Mode/Dark Themes

Due to the growing popularity of dark themes, more and more digital designs are moving to the “dark side.” The cool new dark mode has invaded various platforms: operating systems, TVs, mobile devices, and the web. Apple fueled the dark mode craze with their TV UI, then with Mac OS Mojave, and finally with iOS 13 and their new iPadOS. Dark theme UIs have several advantages: They are easy on the eyes, can be more stylish and elegant, and they save battery life.

However, designers should tread carefully if they choose to walk on the dark side. The usable color palette can be limited, and the wrong combination of colors can be torture for the eyes. Besides that, all kinds of usability issues pop up-mostly related to scannability, readability, and contrast. UX designers need to ensure there is sufficient contrast between UI elements, such as buttons, text, and the background. The context of use, i.e., the viewing environment must be considered, as well as the device on which the dark theme UI is likely to be viewed.

Apple TV has been one of the earliest pioneers of dark theme UIs.

The YouTube dark theme on the desktop.

Dark theme mobile apps have been gaining ground for mobile UX design in 2019 (source).

The most popular mobile apps also work in dark mode.

Minimalism/Maximalism

Great products accomplish more with less. Minimalism as a UX design trend is popular, as indicated by the latest web and mobile app design trends. The poster child for minimalism, Apple has been its most influential and powerful proponent. Giving a nod to design icon Dieter Rams’ ideology and the power of “salient design,” Apple’s minimalism-driven hardware and software designs are nothing short of exceptional. Taking a page from Apple’s playbook, UX designers have long emphasized the importance of stripping digital design down to the bare minimum, giving people only the absolute essentials required to accomplish a task.

Fans of minimalism recognize that people’s cognitive resources are limited as is their ability to process and comprehend informational complexity. People can’t grasp every nuance of stimuli required to assign its complete meaning. Salient information is what will most likely capture attention in a given situation as well as have the most significant influence on how the stimuli will be perceived.

Footwear for the little ones by Toke, a minimalist eCommerce site.

Minimalist website design for Iskos Design.

Minimalist web design for architectural group Mason.

“Creativity is the ability to take a risk. To actually put yourself on the line and risk ridicule, being pilloried, criticized, whatever. But … you must take that risk.” — Sting

The antithesis of sparse, cold minimalism, maximalism is a high-risk, high-reward design movement that requires commitment and a leap of faith. Subversive, rebellious UX designers-counter-culture “design hippies”-turn to maximalism to go big, loud, and make an impact. But the aspiration to stand out from the landscape of conformist minimalists is not without its risks. Maximalism can pack a punch, but it can also backfire. It’s only for the audaciously bold who are willing to risk it all and occasionally go down in flames.

Maximalists believe that the mind loves stimuli. At times bordering on bizarre, maximalism’s layers of color, texture, and patterns scream for attention, its manifesto declaring: “we will not be ignored!” Maximalist design touches many facets of design: graphic design, web design, mobile design, interior design, fashion, architecture, and more—it’s a way for designers to stimulate and enthrall.

Maximalist web design by graphic artist Hattie Stewart.

Posters by Neil Williams for the Southern Student Graphic Design Show at Arkansas State University.

Maximalism in interior design by Sasha Bikoff and Peggy Bell.

Neumorphism

Designers came up with neumorphism out of a desire to stay with a minimalist sensibility but combine the best of skeuomorphism and material design. Skeuomorphism was a bit too much-trying to mimic objects in the real world-and material design was too flat. Neumorphism is somewhere in the middle. However, as exciting as it may look on the surface, this UX design trend may be short-lived, according to some detractors.

Neumorphism allows for “clean designs,” stripped of color-which is typically used to signify elements in a UI-and instead, the technique uses a slightly raised or indented soft drop-shadow to separate UI components. As with many trends, design trends can also be mixed, and designers can create “design trend gumbos,” an exciting medley of the latest flavors. For example, neumorphism can be combined with other trends, such as dark theme UIs.

Neumorphism mixed with dark mode for a mobile app design concept (source).

Two financial apps in neumorphist trend style (source and source).

Mobile banking app screens designed in neumorphist style (source).

A neumorphic clock app (source).

Meaningful Microinteractions

“The details are not the details. They make the design.” — Charles Eames.

It’s all the little details that turn a good digital product into a great one. Dan Saffer, author of the book Microinteractions, defines microinteractions as “contained product moments that revolve around a single use case-they have one main task.” Beyond aesthetics, well-executed, smooth microinteractions can give rise to delight in people during moments of interaction. Microinteractions are about the critical details that make the difference between a friendly experience and a frustrating one.

Microinteractions are not meant exclusively for mobile apps; they can also be designed for websites, desktop apps, and web applications (SaaS). Designers beware though, as with the dark theme trend, tread carefully. Too much in the wrong place can backfire and ruin a user experience; therefore, prudent consideration of how much of it and in what context to provide it is vital.

Upload sequence microinteractions for a desktop app: pause, cancel, and success (source).

A whimsical balloon picker slider control microinteraction (source).

Pull-to-refresh animation microinteraction (source).

More Gesture Interactions on Mobile

Looking for interface clues and tapping on icons has become a no-no on mobile. People increasingly expect various UI elements on mobile to be swipeable, which is becoming a best practice for mobile design. It provides better UX because people can perform gestures in imprecise ways. For example, swiping is faster and easier than finding and tapping an icon to close a card. In most cases, both interaction options are provided.

For minor mobile interactions such as sharing, saving, preferences, zooming up an image, or watching a video in a social feed, layered, swipeable cards are being used more and more. In Apple’s latest iOS 13, the layered card modality is used extensively in their native apps. Other apps are also taking advantage of this natural and speedy mobile interaction technique.