9 Essential UI Design Trends You Should Stick to in 2018

The phrase “it’s never too late” doesn’t relate to making a good first impression. You are at risk to lose users if they don’t like the app’s UI at first glance. That’s why user interface is getting so important. It’s literally the first thing users see even before they start interacting with a product.

According to Google research, 26% of all installed apps are used no more than once. The main reason for this is poor UI. To engage users into your interface, you should follow the most recent design trends.

Reasons to keep up with UI trends

UI trends are intended not only to satisfy users’ aesthetic requirements but provide them with the high level of usability. So, if you dispose of these trends wisely you’ll get happier users.

Affect mood

Multiple studies show that colors affect our mood. This way one color palette can make our users aggressive, while another one passive. Our task is to make them smile and feel the harmony when they face with our UI design. A design that visually looks good contributes to better user engagement and keeps their attention for a long time.

Create trust

Great-looking and polished designs gain users’ trust. It’s a matter of subconscious that tells if a company pays due attention the appearance of its website or mobile app — their products/services are good as well.

Make app easy to use

The main task of design is to build clear and ordered interfaces that would be easy to cope with. They reduce the need for manual actions which in turn saves the time of users and makes website or app easy-to-use.

Web UI trends

Let’s consider trends in web UI design at first.

1. Seamless interface

The good example of this tendency is Loveforiceland website. The thing is all the content is placed on one page and it’s loaded without any transitions when a visitor clicks on it. This way, users simply don’t leave the main page because all the data is pulled to it.

2. Typography

Big headlines and gigantic fonts in combination with smooth animation are in trend this year. If to use this trend for a website — it will look eye-catching even without any content at all. That’s because the typography can replace the content and it’ll look great. Re-Create website is a good example of this trend.

3. Gradient transitions

If gradient colors are popular for a long time now, then in 2018 we’ll face the trend connected with a smooth transition from one gradient to another during a certain action. For example, gradients on Symmod and Spotifywebsites.

4. Custom illustrations

Another important trend for 2018 is the rising quality of illustrations. It’s not a secret that custom illustrations allow websites to get a unique style which in turn bring a better experience to users. By the way, this concerns not only illustrations but photos as well. Don’t use the mainstream ones. Make sure they are unique or at least well-looking. Otherwise, users may think they won’t find anything interesting here.

5. WebGL

It’s a JavaScript-based library that deals with the rendering of 3D graphics. How this concerns UI designers? With its help, you are able to design completely fascinating ways of interaction with your website’s visitors. Awwwards features over 500 websites created with the help of this library, so you can check what it’s capable of.

6. Video on websites

Video is always a good idea. As for 2018, this type of content gains traction and becomes even more important than photos or texts. Also, it’s easy to share the video with friends that means they can easily go viral. For example, Mediaboom website.

It would be perfect if videos you use were of the same tone as the website so they could complement each other. But remember that videos should also be unique in order to fit your project and don’t cause contradictory feelings in users.

Mobile UI design trends

It’s time to consider UI trends in mobile app design for 2018.

7. Strong focus on UX

UX trends and rules is something you should stick to at all times. If you want to build a worthy mobile app design you should combine the ease of usage with clean and convenient interface. The main rule you should bear in mind is that UI should be effective, not only beautiful.

8. Interaction

The mobile app design you create should interact with users and respond to their actions. In other words, each element a user can interact with has to give smooth feedback without unforeseen changes.

9. Soothing colors

That’s right, this year’s UI trends say no to bright colors and give preference to calm color pastel. This makes your application look refined and cool. You can see the examples on Dribbble here and here.