The first thing that comes to a user’s notice in a mobile app is its UI design. It remains the primary focus throughout the application. The UI design gives an early impression of your brand and helps users connect with it. The more intuitive and customer-centric the UI, the better the UX.

UI/UX designs have transformed over the years. New design trends get introduced from time to time to further enhance the user experience and make it better than yesterday. Today, we will walk you through the list of popular and top UI/UX mobile trends for 2020 that grabbed users’ attention and were well-received by people. The list would also highlight the mobile app design trends dominating in 2021.

Also Read: Understanding the difference between UX and UI

1. UI Aiding Feature Evolution

Mobile users browse multiple apps on a daily basis. Among those are some apps that require users to log in every time they open those applications. Online payment apps are one such example. The world has gone digital and cashless/digital transactions have proliferated. People now prefer to pay online rather than doing a cash payment.

Imagine the level of annoyance when they have to enter the password every single time to log in to the app and make a transaction. Even though this was aimed at strengthening the users’ online payment security, this was somewhat creating a poor user experience as well. Moreover, it’s difficult to remember passwords for several apps. Thanks to the Passwordless login feature that made things convenient. Now, many apps, including the likes of WhatsApp and Twitter, have adapted passwordless authentication, providing users with a Fingerprint login or Face unlock that lets them quickly access the app. Biometric recognition is prevailing and is one of the topmost UI and UX mobile app design trends to look out for.

Next among the popular UI and UX mobile trends is Liquid swipe and buttonless design. Buttonless design led to the implementation of gestures-based UI design. In fact, gestures have taken significant control even over navigation buttons, eliminating every possible distraction and keeping the entire focus of the user on the content. The liquid swipe effect is adding more enhancements in gestures and is taking its use further.

2. UI Styling Trends

The demand for dark mode in mobile apps has remarkably increased. Even though many smartphone brands are rolling out the dark mode in their devices through the software update, mobile apps are unveiling their separate dark mode too. A dark mode is a UI design, which when enabled, creates a dark front-end and helps save battery life by decreasing the consumption of light pixels besides reducing the strain on the eyes. WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube are some of the popular apps that offer dark mode functionality.

Talking about illustrations, UI/UX designers experimenting with different illustration styles to create graphics and designs that leave an emotional impact on the users. In other words, designs with which users can relate or connect to, emotionally. Hand-drawn illustrations are also taken into account by the designers.

The modern UI/UX mobile trends also focus on the bottom navigation. These days, most of the smartphones come up with large screen sizes. Though it is beneficial from the content exploration perspective, a larger display creates frustration among users as well. Naturally, the navigation elements of an app are positioned at the top and the thumb has a crucial role to play while interacting with them. A large screen makes the reach of the thumb far away from the interactive elements, creating a troublesome user experience. Users have to adjust while holding their smartphones.

This concern made mobile app designers reluctant to shift their focus on bottom navigation, hence, allowing users to navigate comfortably. In the coming years, more and more apps will be designed considering bottom navigation.

3. AR/VR and Dynamic Visual Experience

The concept of applying Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technology enables incorporating the virtual components into the real-world image or setting up a whole new virtual world, thereby providing an almost real-like experience to the users. eCommerce, mHealth, travel, education, etc. are some of the niches where AR and VR can be accustomed to its UI and UX.The implementation of AR and VR will not only only enhance your existing UX design but improve user engagement as well.

AR technology based apps overlay objects, sounds or design around your world, taking user experience to the next level. An example of an app using the AR technology is Ikea Place. Ikea is a furniture retail company, and its app lets you virtually place their furniture around your home to see how it would look in your living space. All you need to do is pick a piece of furniture and point your camera towards the area where you want to place it. A different approach to AR is seen in Snapchat that mas use of AR-based lenses and lets you add real-time filters while you click a picture.

VR, on the other hand, puts users completely into a virtual space. It requires the use of a headset to block out their current surroundings and keep focus of their vision on their mobile screens. Some of the apps making use of the VR technology are Google Cardboard, Google Earth VR.

We might witness many dynamics in the UI design in the following years. App designers may take up the responsibility of designing interfaces that provide a dynamic experience to users. Short video clips, artistic animations, and micro-interactions are a few examples to understand how you can utilize this latest trend of dynamic user experience in your mobile app design.

4. Voice Searches Plus Design for Disabled People

With people getting familiar with Siri, Google Assistant, and other AI-powered voice- controlled technologies, voice searches have surged remarkably in recent years. Voice commands are in trend and will heavily dominate in the coming years. It has been predicted that 50% of all searches will be voice-based by this year and voice shopping will hit the $40 billion mark in the U.S by 2022. This has led to a massive transformation in terms of user interface and user experience.

Designers have already initiated deploying creative designs of voice-interfaces integrated with some amazing motion design effects, enabling users to easily perform a search for business products and services using their voice commands. Though voice commands are not something new, it had some complications earlier and the results were also not satisfactory. This evolved, and now the technologies hold the potential to provide a tailor-made experience to users.

Adding to the UI/UX design trends is design for people with disabilities. Some of the modern UI and UX trends aim specifically at those who are visually impaired, cannot hear or provide commands with their hands properly. This introduces us to screen-test scoring apps, vibration-based responses, in-app navigation tools, etc. Designers strive to create UI/UX designs keeping a strict focus on accessibility so that even people with disabilities can perform the desired task without facing many difficulties. For instance, creating a screen for visually impaired people that helps them hear the UI elements and provides vibration feedback on their response.

To Conclude

The above-mentioned UI/UX trends for mobile app design have gained immense popularity among designers and can be looked upon when designing your next mobile application. New design trends will keep coming, it’s just how you can make the best out of those UI/UX trends into your business and make the user experience even richer and their lives even better.