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Imia Hazel
Imia Hazel

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10 Top UI/UX Design Trends For 2021

Each year, new lists of UI design trends are published, as is the case with trends. However, there is a reason behind this. When a large number of players adopt a particular trend, it ultimately becomes unsuccessful due to oversaturation.

Thus, the way forward for designers is to check them out periodically to provide something fresh to their clients, while company owners may use them as a source of inspiration for their brand's development.

Users browse thousands of websites every day, and businesses must demonstrate more innovation to capture their attention. Entrepreneurs place a premium on the aesthetics and usefulness of their online solutions to entice customers to remain.

Additionally, they keep a close eye on the advanced CSS techniques and user interface trends to stay current.

Now, let's take a closer look at the top UI design ideas for 2021 and discover how prominent businesses effectively integrate them.

1. Glassmorphism

Glassmorphism UI, A New Variant of Neumorphism

Photo by HeiMaUX

Neomorphism was frequently employed in web design techniques last year. It is a synthesis of two widely used methods to user interface design. They are referred to as skeuomorphism and flat design, respectively. These UI trends are opposed and frequently regarded as opposed.

In reality, people frequently interact with items via glass. Consider a consumer perusing a jewelers' window for a new watch. Glassmorphism simulates the appearance of being 'through the glass' by utilizing background blur. Glassmorphism creates the illusion of a sequence of floating glass panels in a vertical area.

In 2021, designers discovered a new interest known as glassmorphism. This style originated with the blur effect, often known as a blurred background. When individuals view such an element, it appears as though they are gazing through a glass.

Numerous well-known systems use this UI design. Designers, on the other hand, must keep accessibility in mind. Transparency complicates the interaction of visually challenged users with your product.

If you're employing glassmorphism, ensure that items have sufficient contrast and space to correctly represent the hierarchy of information to make it apparent how to do actions.

2. Minimalism

Minimalism UI/UX Design

Photo by Tanya Tsiguleva

Minimalism appears to be the style these days, whether interior design or UI/UX design. Daily, we come across numerous images. Occasionally, the plan appears dense and congested. This distracted and overloaded the user, resulting in the emergence of the minimalistic UI/UX Design movement. The components in this design are kept to a minimum to avoid overwhelming the user, like applying soft box shadows. Additionally, this type of design helps keep the user-focused and away from distractions.

One graphic design aesthetic that will always look beautiful owing to its inherent simplicity and focus on usefulness is minimalism. Because minimalism is always clean and functional, it will be a major design trend in UI/UX in 2021 to employ this form of design to produce simple and aesthetically attractive UI.

Minimalist UI design contributes to creating a clean layout by directing the viewer's attention on goods or critical material, providing the user with the information he seeks without using extra elements.

3. ID Authentication

Facial Unlocks

Photo by Eddie Luong

Passwords are frequently forgotten daily. The actual culprits are password systems that demand special characters, numeric characters, including capital and lowercase letters.

Regarding UI/UX design trends, while fingerprint sensors or facial unlocks are not new technologies, they are sure to receive a makeover in 2021 and beyond. The software platform is the most hacker-friendly. Fingerprint logins are an integral element of the user interface design of mobile applications. Thefts of data are on the rise, so security is a top priority nowadays.

4. Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality Interface

Photo by Jessica Lewis

Web design trends in 2021 will emphasize thinking beyond the box or keeping to the grid more precisely. Forget about the screen-based UI. Rather than that, it would help if you stressed interactions that feel authentic to the actual world.

Google and Apple have already released their augmented reality development platforms, ARCore or ARKit, enabling the seamless integration of the digital and physical worlds.

AR user interfaces can take a variety of forms:

Object-related, which employs real-world items with tethered interaction; Fixed to screen space, which requires the user to position the camera in a certain way; and Real-world-related, which uses the surrounding physical environment.

Apart from their headgear, Apple spends heavily on augmented reality, and there is much enthusiasm about the Apple Glasses.

As a result, if you haven't already, you should begin increasing your understanding of augmented reality user interface kits. Additionally, you may wish to consider the context & function of augmented reality experiences carefully. As designers, we must contemplate the possibility that we may need to prepare and begin learning new technologies. In the following years, building augmented reality interfaces with 3D components may become a precious talent.

5. Microcopy

Microcopy Statement

Photo by Massimiliano Albizzati

The term "microcopy" refers to the little sentences and paragraphs that appear on the internet, on the website, in almost any app, or on a product. It may be the tiny error message or the pop-up menu. Captions, buttons, loading, and error pages may all be included. Even that one notice is informing you that the website makes use of cookies.
That is the official definition of a user experience microcopy.

However, what distinguishes (excellent) microscopy is its ability to inspire people, earn their confidence, and empower them. A successful microcopy makes a statement and has a considerable effect.

Without microcopy, users would have become disoriented while interacting with any computer interface. Often referred to as "little words with a lot of power," it significantly impacts both the user experience & conversion rates.

6. Micro-Interactions

Micro-Interactions Experience

Photo by Aaron Iker

When design addresses universal issues, micro-interactions are the pleasurable moments your consumers experience while interacting with your product. These small tempting moments bring enormous value in terms of providing a compassionate experience to end customers.

Additionally, they are not only aesthetic components; they perform optimally when combined with user action triggers. Micro-interactions are critical not for their usefulness or return on investment but because they improve the stickiness of the goods/service and contribute to successful word-of-mouth.

7. Voice User Interface – VUI

Voice User Interface

Photo by Malte Helmhold

As a result of its broad acceptance in UX/UI design, interaction using voice user interfaces has resurfaced as a UX trend. It has long been established that design will not have to be visually appealing to function well.

A voice interface is a private one. It is more about context or data synthesis than it is about designs itself. Nonetheless, designers are attempting to stay up with the current user experience trends and therefore are increasingly providing consumers with a voice interface.

For instance, there are hundreds of applications available today that allow you to translate any word or sentence into another language. It operates as follows. By pressing a button, the gadget begins recording and interpreting your speech. This enables you to converse effortlessly with those who do not speak your language.

8. Animations

Animations Design

Photo by Tran Mau Tri Tam

If distinctive graphics can capture a user's attention, animations have the power to blow them away. Animations, more than static pictures, boost user engagement and bring designs to life. There are several JavaScript animation libraries that can be used to add some cool animations to your design.

Illustrations and animations both contribute to storytelling by aiding in the visualization of what a business or product has to offer at a glance. While drawings take less work, dynamic animations retain all of the benefits of pictures while being more successful at directing and maintaining user attention.

9. Vivid Colors

Vivid Color Schemes

Photo by Tanya Tsiguleva

As I mentioned in my post regarding 8 Fundamental Principles of Effective Web Design, this year is a big year for vibrant and colorful color schemes in graphic design and user interface design.

Graphic designers will leverage color psychology to convey an energetic and magical feeling to the viewer through the use of color as a critical element of the design, and you can find places to sell your designs online.

This UI design trend would be applied in various ways and combined with a variety of graphic design components. Still, we will see it most effectively in using a creative color gradient in websites or, in some cases, blur and grain to create a new and fresh appearance.

10. Large Typography

Large and Bold Typefaces

Typography is critical in product design. In other instances, the items are based on typography. The proper selection of typefaces and font size may frequently produce astonishing outcomes.

This approach has also been gaining traction in UI/UX trends. Graphic designers employ big fonts to capture and maintain the user's attention. Nowadays, users scan the material. They do not read all you write. Thus, UI new designs embrace big fonts to aid the user in rapidly locating the information they want.

Over the last year, we've already seen some graphic designers begin to use large and bold typefaces in UI and graphic design. With new creative typography designers conducting experiments with fonts, we expect to see a significant trend toward using large typography on UI Design in 2021. In some cases, it will be the primary element of the website.

Many graphic designers will use chaotic typography as the primary component of their UI design projects this year. Additionally, this UI/UX Design Trend will use a brutalist design approach to generate a sense of deconstruction.

Conclusion

Organizations who follow the current user interface trends gain the ability to make their websites & products more enjoyable and simplified for their consumers.

This improves the consumer experience and conversion rates. Notably, there is a delicate balance between being fashionable and providing an exciting client experience. This is where thorough study and testing separate the winners from the losers.

I hope you find this post helpful and that it provides you with a wealth of UI/UX design ideas for your next project. Feel free to experiment and play with these design trends and create unique user experiences.

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Top comments (15)

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_lksme profile image
Lukas Mechsner

Thank you very much for your time to write this article!
Recently, I haven't been working without a designer, so I had to rely on my own feeling, which boils down to: "i will wing it somehow"
Your article helped me a lot to get more insights in the recent trends of UX/UI.
So I will definitely use that input in the future 😉

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imiahazel profile image
Imia Hazel

I am happy that article is helpful for you.
Thanks for the appreciation.

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patrickkjames profile image
James Patrick

Amazing article. The biggest advantage of VUIs is that they facilitate an eyes-free and hands-free way of interacting with a system. VUIs are here to stay and will be integrated in more and more products in the future.

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imiahazel profile image
Imia Hazel

Thanks for the appreciation. Yes, you are absolutely right that VUIs are future.

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jeydotc profile image
Jeysson Guevara

I personally find glass morphism really ugly, not sure why.

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imiahazel profile image
Imia Hazel

Yes, it is all matter of choice.

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charanleo25 profile image
Charanleo25

Oh cool and perfect from 1 to 10.

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imiahazel profile image
Imia Hazel

Article's first comment with these magical words are enormous source of encouragement. Thanks for the appreciation.

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bomaaaa profile image
Bomaaaa

Thank you for this. This is so helpful!

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imiahazel profile image
Imia Hazel

I am happy, It helped you.
Thanks

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jishan profile image
G Shan

Thank you very much

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imiahazel profile image
Imia Hazel

Thanks you as well, and thanks for the comment.

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imiahazel profile image
Imia Hazel

You are welcome.

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sharansharma94 profile image
sharansharma94

Wanted something like this from so long ,great job

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Imia Hazel

Thanks so much.
I am very happy that my little contribution is helpful.