Well here we are well within the first month of the new year, and of course, what we all do at this time is to look back at the last year and see what we can learn from what happened….
I came across this blog whilst looking for information on the latest trends for web design (just so I could disagree with them of course – only kidding) and thought it was so good that I would share some of it on our blog. For the full story of course you will have to go to the source (cause that is the way things are done on the web, its a sort of etiquette).
The title of the blog was the 10 web design trends for 2013, these being listed below:-
1. CONTENT FIRST
2. SIMPLICITY OF DESIGN INTERACTION AND CONTENT
3. UX CENTERED DESIGN
4. APP STYLE INTERFACES
5. THE UNIFICATION OF DESKTOP AND MOBILE INTO A SINGLE VERSION
6. SVG AND RESPONSIVE TECHNIQUES
7. FLAT COLORS AND NO MORE SKEUOMORPHISM
8. TECHNOLOGY AGNOSTIC
9. EXPERIMENTATION AND INNOVATION IN DEVICE SENSORS AND INTERACTION
10. THE INTERNET OF THINGS
It went on to say that when looking into this and collecting views, that it was not easy, 3 great quotes being provided, all of which hit the mark from my point of view.
It then pointed out to that all web designers had to take account of what users wanted to see and what device they wanted to see them on, it was not up to them, but the consumer.
All top stuff and quite correct (the bit about the train website was the best I’ve seen for ages).
So, if you are up to learn a thing or two, or just want a look so that you can disagree with it all, read on…..
It’s no easy task putting together a short summary of all the interviews, but as far as we’re concerned, there are a few memorable statements in the book which nicely encapsulate the conclusions we’ve come to:
Bruce Lawson:“If I go to a train website, I don’t really want to see a picture of Richard Branson smiling at me, I don’t want to read the Chief Exec’s ambitions and life history. All I want to know is what time my train is and how much it is.”
Karen McGrane:“Mobile is not the Lite version. You don’t get to decide which device people use to visit your website. They do.”
Simon Foster:“I always keep it in mind that no matter how beautiful I make a website the average user only really wants to spend about 10 seconds on it.”
This project reveals the need to prioritize content and the user’s point of view. Almost all the participants expressed concerns about accessibility and application performance across the multiple devices that exist today and will only continue to increase in number. This wasn’t the case a few years ago, as Rachel Andrew points out:
“We were all saying ‘in a few year’s time we’re going to have massive screens and all this space and people are going to have really fast connections’ and what’s happened is we’ve all ended up on tiny little screens with crappy bandwidth.”
So years ago the tendencies would have been very different. We would have been focusing more on development of visual effects, animation etc…But the future is unknowable.
We have to reach our target users, wherever they live, whatever device or browser they use, and serve them our content in the most efficient way possible. Though this is what web standards evangelists have been shouting from the rooftops for years.
All the trends discussed here are interdependent and fundamentally defined by three principles: Content oriented, UX-centered and Simplicity, which make up the new paradigm we’ll need to work with when we come to face the deluge of devices that’s looming on the horizon.
Click the link to see the whole interesting article on web design trends.
