15 Web Design Trends of 2016 - MAAN Softwares

15 Website Design
Trends For 2016

Hottest Trends That Will Shape Web
Design Come 2016
Trends in web design, like fashion trends, come and go. Sometimes trends
are dictated by necessity (like responsive design). Other trends are industry
shifts, such as the change from skeuomorphism to flat design.
As time inches forward with each
passing year, many new design
trends loom on the horizon. The
field of web design is always
changing with new tools,
workflows, and best practices for
constructing usable layouts
It’s tough to predict which exact
trends will draw the greatest
attention. Yet recent history shows
a pattern of trends that have been
growing like wildfire. We’ve
organized some unique trends that
have gained traction over 2015 and
will likely continue well into 2016.
These 15 trends — 14 for this year, plus 1 for the future — respond directly to
the evolving ways we move through the web.

“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes,
no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for.”

➜ Well-designed microinteractions can be defining because, despite
their simplicity, they’re often very powerful.
➜ Pinning an inspirational photo, liking a witty status, and retweeting a
powerful message have become so common we don’t even need to
name the websites that birthed them.
➜ When done right, microinteractions offer an intuitive way to interact
with a website. When done wrong, they can cause frustration
through unexpected functionality — or downright quirkiness.
As we designers streamline our web experiences, we’ll see — and create
— more microinteractions to help us simplify the actions we need to take.
Microinteractions

2.
Reliance on images
over text

“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of
content is not design, it’s decoration.”

➜ Solid copy strengthens any website, but if it can be said with a
photo, animation, or short video, it might be a really good idea to do
so.
➜ In general, text works best for removing the ambiguity that visual
methods of communication are prone to.
➜ If you want to design and publish in an accessible way that
prioritizes every user’s experience, you’ll want to pair visual and
written content. That way, everyone can experience your content in
the best way for them.
Reliance on images over text

“Create your own visual style… let it be unique for
yourself and yet identifiable for others.”

➜ Like the appliances in a model home, mockups are about as
functional as a cardboard television.
➜ Designing with real data gives us a deeper understanding of how a
page will function. In part because it surfaces all the “problems”
designers strive to avoid in their mockups, such as long headlines,
low-quality images, etc.
➜ Designing with real content gives both writers and designers better
insight into what they need to do.
Designing with real data

“Great web design without functionality is like a sports
car with no engine.”

➜ With the multitude of screen sizes out there, the term “above the
fold” has lost significance.
➜ Eye-catching transitions and differentiated section designs transform
what could be a monotonous trudge into a delightful process of
discovery.
➜ Long scrolling changes UX design, opening the door for more
narrative approaches and simpler interaction models.
Scroooooooooolling

5.
Conversational/bot
websites and apps

“It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You
have to get bad in order to get good.”

➜ Nobody wants to navigate a complex series of menus to get
something done. Conversation makes for a much easier experience.
➜ Apps and other web services are using this more natural approach to
make ordering goods, getting financial advice, or booking a hotel
room as easy as sending a few text messages.
➜ Plus, various tools have popped up to help non-coders make their
own bots, so we’re likely to see tons more of these over the coming
years.
➜ After all, in most cases, there’s already a well-built design wrapping
the conversational experience. That means the words themselves
become the core UI.
Conversational/bot websites and apps

6.
The death of the
hamburger menu

“Intuitive design is how we give the user new
superpowers.”

➜ Hamburger menus are polarizing. Much like election-year politics, we
don’t recommend discussing them after a few drinks in mixed
company. Especially if said company includes UX designers.
➜ But from a usability standpoint, hamburger menus have their
problems. Few people even recognize the icon. And even those who
do recognize it don’t know what to expect when the menu opens,
given all the ways that interaction can unfold.
➜ Finally, they also conceal a site’s breadth, thereby voiding individual
page’s context and place within the larger whole.
➜ With navigation visible on-screen, people can easily get the lay of the
land and see their options. Without it, that big-picture orientation
gets much harder.
The death of the hamburger menu

“Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores. If the
one you’re with isn’t doing the job, there’s always,
always, always another.”

➜ We’ve all experienced the power of push notifications. No matter
where you are or what you’re doing, it’s so hard to ignore that little
ding or buzz. So hard to not whip out your phone and engage with
whoever’s pinging you.
➜ many websites are trying to bring that power to the desktop. If you
haven’t seen it yet, this usually manifests as a little modal-like
element sliding down from the top of the browser, asking you if the
site can send you desktop notifications, a la Slack.
➜ It makes perfect sense: after all, here you are on the site, ready to
engage with it. Why hope you’ll sign up for the newsletter and then
hope you’ll actually open it, when they can just hit you up right here
and now?
➜ Perhaps the next year will see this technique refined to be more
effective and helpful.
Desktop push notifications

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of
art. Making money is art and working is art and good
business is the best art.”

➜ Clocking in at around 90 seconds, product explainer videos offer a
quick, concise way to tout the virtues of a given product.
➜ With informative voiceovers and clever animations, product
explainer videos can work for any-sized company in letting people
know just why their products are great.
➜ One thing brands will have to keep in mind when using such videos
is their inaccessibility to some audiences if captions aren’t included.
➜ Plus, many people simply refuse to watch videos on marketing sites,
so you don’t want to lean on videos to explain everything.
Product explainer videos

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way
as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”

➜ Duotone images are created by “printing” a grayscale image with a
second, non-black color. The technique has its origins in printing and
fits well within a minimalist web design aesthetic.
➜ Duotone images make great hero backgrounds because they add
some life without unduly distracting from the content, or creating
legibility issues.
➜ A simple duotone color scheme can also be a great way to create a
clean, consistent-looking page — particularly when you’re trying to
present several very-different images in the same place (such as
logos or team member headshots).
Duotones

10.
Custom illustration
and iconography

“The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the
ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For
us, the visual disease is what we have around, and
what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.”

➜ Yes, you can find tons of well-designed stock visuals to use in your
designs. But to really set yourself apart, you need to create
something unique.
➜ Having someone create visuals and iconography customizes your
website and projects your personality. Plus, it shows that you really
put time and care into this design.
➜ Stock graphics are one of the hallmarks of the boring homogeneity
many people perceive in the web design world.
➜ Creating custom visuals that speak directly with and to your content
offers one way out of the fast food design trap. Here’s hoping we see
much, much more of this.
Duotones

“Practice safe design: Use a concept.”

➜ A minimalist design approach leaves room for more artistic uses of
type. Extremes in sizing, custom typefaces, traditional fonts used in
unconventional ways, and highly stylized lettering can all have a
huge impact.
➜ Combining font sizes can have a huge impact on the look and
organization of a page. Single words can take up an entire page.
➜ Using vastly different sized fonts creates hierarchy, which in turn
supports people in their efforts to understand a website and find the
content they want.
➜ It can be overkill to fill a page with flourish-rich fonts, but when used
tastefully, this kind of typography can create a strong mood and
bring life to a page.
➜ While custom fonts help create a dramatically more diverse and
beautiful web, they can also negatively impact performance. Let’s
just be thankful that today’s system fonts are a far cry from Arial and
Helvetica.
Stylized typography

➜ As flat and minimalist design have gained popularity, bright colors
have been on the rise too.
➜ As noted by sitepoint.com, these more vibrant color schemes aren’t
limited to just web design, but can be found in fashion design,
weathercast graphics, and interior design.
➜ Card or container layouts have become more popular and using
vibrant colors in these blocks creates a bold layout.
➜ Bright colors also help UI elements like buttons and navigation jump
out from a page. Finally, bright palettes can have a strong brand
affect — you can’t really think of Huge without thinking “bright pink,”
or Google without “primary colors.”
Vibrant color schemes

“Digital design is like painting, except the paint never
dries.”

➜ Chatting with customers and responding to their questions helps
personalize a company's web presence.
➜ Chat thus becomes an effective tool in helping customers solve their
problems. For those who aren’t comfortable with computers, a
representative can now help them remotely by cobrowsing or screen-
sharing.
➜ And it removes the need to find and then browse through dense
technical documentation, reducing friction.
➜ Direct chat can also help convert new users in a highly contextual
way. After all, if you’re working to solve a particular problem and
suddenly get a message that helps you overcome exactly that
problem, your belief in a product will skyrocket.
Direct chat with support

14.
Full-screen sign up
“modals”

“Websites promote you 24/7: No employee will do
that.”

➜ Instead of interrupting you right when you thought tip #3 was getting
really good, these full-screen “modals” push the content down, filling
your whole screen.
➜ With email marketing being such a huge deal, getting interested
customers to sign up is more important than ever.
➜ And while they might not present a perfect-world solution where
blogs just let us sign up if we want to, at least they’re a bit less
annoying.
Full-screen sign up “modals”

15.
Looking to the
future: virtual reality
for the web

“Technology over technique produces emotionless
design.”

➜ It may be in only its earliest stages of development, but virtual reality
web browsing will one day be a ... uh ... reality.
➜ Mozilla’s WebVR team envisions a virtual reality web where every
site can present people with an immersive, 3D reality utterly different
from the web we’ve grown used to.
➜ That said, there’s no better time to think about the future than right
now.
Looking to the future: virtual reality for the web

Thanks!Any questions?
You can find us at:
https://maansoftwares.com/
Info@maansoftwares.com

15 Web Design Trends of 2016 - MAAN Softwares

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