Which UI design trends will dominate 2024? What is the next big trend in UX? Which trends that prevailed in previous years will survive in 2024 or even strengthen, and which will fade away? Twelve designers from Miquido decided to share their expertise from working with our clients and put together their personal views on the product, UX, and UI design trends.
The world of design is dynamic. Here, 12 months sometimes feel like 12 years. However, based on experience, market observation, and conversations with fellow designers, experts from our UX design company did their best to separate temporary fads from full-fledged, promising UI and UX trends with a global impact.
So, what does the future hold for UI UX design trends in 2024? Be sure to read the detailed report prepared by 12 designers from Miquido.
TOP UI and UX Design Trends for 2024:
- Scrollytelling
- No-code tools
- Accessible design
- Usability Studies in VR
- AI in Figma plugins
- Sustainable web design
- AI-driven design
- Growth designers
- Video content
- Voice & Conversational UI
- Typography
- UX writing
1. Scrollytelling Trend
Scrollytelling certainly is one of the most-discussed UX design trends for 2024. This unique design technique originates from numerous studies that have been conducted on how cognitive load and limited human capacity to store information affect information processing. Scrollytelling transforms stories into users’ interactive and immersive experiences
Scrollytelling is based on the concept of audio and visual content that provides deeper meaning by conveying ideas that words alone cannot express. Whenever you want to express the inexpressible in your design, try adding short movies, animations, or highlighting specific data in visualizations.
Scrollytelling works best for stories that have a clear chronological order. As events unfold, you can use themes to bring the who and what to life. It can be viewed as visual storytelling that enriches the story and draws you into it. Borrowing from one-page and landing page layouts makes the details dance and encourages you to keep scrolling.
The main advantage of scrollytelling is that it allows you to create personalised user experience. And it’s essential in today’s digital world, where online users typically expect higher-quality multimedia content.
Networks have changed the way stories are told. The animation, visual effects, and interactivity make reading the story more active. Scrollytelling is a multimedia experience that encourages deeper thinking and understanding. And last but not least, this UX design trend certainly turns your readers into active participants by shedding light on what words alone can’t convey.
2. No-code = No-boundaries? No-code & UX/UI Design Trends
While no-code development has been on everyone’s lips this year, I feel the upcoming months will move this trend toward a more mature state. There are no design-oriented conferences that would omit the topic.
When we hear the term no-code, most of us designers immediately think of Webflow. Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed, the last keynote from Webflow Conf 2022 presenting features to come proved that the tool is expanding at breakneck speed. But at the same time, we see more and more tools empowering designers to move forward and achieve extraordinary things with less effort and without requiring skilled engineers in the design process.
Designers and product or business owners are no longer bound to highly advanced tools with complicated transitions, accessible only to a narrow group of professionals. With just a few clicks in a no-code tool (such as ProtoPie), designers are able to create beautiful user interactions and deliver prototypes of fidelity as high as a ready-market product. As a UX designer, I see huge business potential in the no-code UX & UI design trend as it allows companies to gather more precise and valuable feedback on the early stages of a product lifecycle.
What are the next steps in no-code development? A standalone app that could be downloaded from official application stores? Surprise – we are already here! Several tools on the market, such as FlutterFlow, already allow users to develop an application in a visual interface, integrate it with external databases, and push it to the App Store or Google Play. Indeed, those no-code tools still have some limitations, yet the final product created may serve as a great Proof of Concept for simple mobile apps.
Lastly, I also see a shift in focus of the younger generation of designers. While Figma is still a “must have” in everyone’s tech stack, designers who are starting their journey aim to adapt to new circumstances. They move forward with a skill set allowing them to deliver complex projects by themselves – so the client doesn’t need to hire an entire team of different software development experts. Will 2024 push our design limits even further and blur the boundaries between designers and developers? I sure hope so!
3. Accessible Design Regulations: WCAG 2.2
Topics related to accessibility have been steadily gaining ground among designers. For a good reason – enhancing digital products’ accessibility and removing barriers contributes to usability, serving a larger audience, as well as business growth.
Furthermore, in light of the European Accessibility Act coming into effect in 2025, designing accessible experiences will be a legal requirement rather than an option. Undoubtedly, 2024 will be a year of accessibility-related topics gaining further momentum in UI design trends.
One of the most reliable accessibility benchmarks, WCAG, is going to turn many designers’ heads due to a significant incoming update. WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is a set of recommendations on how to make web content accessible developed by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. To date, WCAG 2.1 has been the most recent set of guidelines. However, 2024 is likely to bring a long-awaited update: WCAG 2.2, which has been continually modified and developed since 2020.
So what’s coming? Here is a short selection of some new, interesting Success Criteria related to the expanding accessible UI and UX design trend:
- Focus Appearance (2.4.11)
The way the focus state is indicated should enclose the focused component or be at least as large as the area of a 1px perimeter of the unfocused component or is at least as large as a 4px line along the shortest side of its bounding box. In both cases, a focused interface component should have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 between focused and unfocused states and a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 against adjacent non-focused colors.
- Dragging Movements (2.5.7)
Functionalities requiring a dragging movement should be achievable for a user without dragging.
- Accessible Authentication (3.3.7)
A test relying on cognitive abilities (e.g. solving a puzzle) should not be required for any step of an authentication process unless additional assistance (such as an alternative authentication method) is provided.
- Redundant Entry (3.3.9)
When a user is required to enter information that has been previously provided by or to them, this content should be either auto-populated or available for selection.
4. The trend of Usability Studies in VR
Beyond a doubt, the global COVID-19 pandemic has caused a series of perturbations regarding our mindset on how to deal with the most common research methods such as usability testing. Suddenly we were forced to adjust our processes and tools to perform them exclusively online, as efficiently as we did before.
Our new approach, supported for over two years, proved that running remote usability studies is much easier regarding scheduling them anytime, anyplace, on a broader range of people from different parts of the world. Finally, the time gap between online sessions and summarizing results is much shorter, making the whole process more effective in terms of time and money.
Gaining this new experience has made most digital usability testing solutions trustworthy more than ever. However, we are truly lacking the benefit of direct user observations, which gather users’ unconscious, yet very valuable, insights.
Running Usability Studies using Virtual Reality seems to be a fair deal – it maintains all benefits of remote user tests and, at the same time, simulates the real-world experiences between the researcher, prototype, and study participants.
In Miquido, we already appreciate the benefits of Usability Testing in VR experiments that we conduct within our Product Design solutions. I am aware that VR is not an accessible platform as it currently exists. Still, I enthusiastically observe how it turned from curiosity to a full-fledged UX design trend within a few last months.
Using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technologies to support user testing is undoubtedly a trending activity nowadays. I’m looking forward to seeing it becoming a commonly used solution soon.
5. Artificial intelligence in Figma Plugins
In 2022, we began to experience artificial intelligence in creating text and images. AI has started to enter the IT market at an accelerating pace, with UX and user interface design trends being no exception.
In 2024, we will witness the emergence of several plug-ins for Figma, allowing us to generate editable elements using analogously written text. Spoiler alert: such tools already exist but are not officially available on the market. What do I mean by that? Just compare the GPT-3 with a UI generator in Figma!
Regarding UI and graphic design trends, 2024 will be a year of emerging tools such as GPT-3 but explicitly designed for Figma. At the same time, I believe that AI will not replace designers in the near future. I would rather say it will play a significant role in automating repeatable processes.
So what about the human factor? Let’s consider the usability aspect. Do you know how exactly AI tools generate designs? Are they based on some database of design patterns and researcher reports? Do they include a heuristic base and good design practices? Are AI tools capable of generating UIs knowing the target audience and users’ needs?
The discussion about AI and design reminds me of the good, old debate about the golden ratio (a mathematical pattern for beauty). Training the AI to reproduce “just correct” projects or streamline some design processes is as possible as necessary. But will AI replace designers entirely? At the moment, I highly doubt it.
6. Sustainable Web Design Trend
The continuous development of web technologies opens up many opportunities and brings many benefits to society and the environment. Yet, at the same time, it also has its darker side. The Internet currently produces approximately 3.8% of global carbon emissions. It’s also used to spread manipulative content, violate privacy, and – in some countries – even limit personal freedom. So now, it’s time to discuss one of the most critical current user experience design trends: sustainable web design.
Sustainable web design strives to minimise digital carbon footprint and produce ethical and environmentally-conscious solutions.
As designers, we can implement strategies focused on:
1) Usability – users should be able to achieve their goals quickly and efficiently. We need to simplify user journeys and focus on user needs to save energy, which is spent being online.
2) Accessibility – following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) can make digital products and services accessible to nearly one billion people worldwide who have some physical or cognitive disabilities.
3) Content optimized for searching – we can spend quite a lot of time searching for information online, even up to 9.3 hours per week, according to some reports. Searching for relevant content consumes energy. As designers, we can solve this by focusing on intuitive information architecture, optimising content for quick scanning, and creating smart onsite searches and filters.
4) Minimised content weight – images, videos, and animations can weigh a lot, so they should be used only when necessary. Minimizing content size can also lower data transfer, data storage, and energy consumption in the end.
5) Privacy – do we respect user privacy and provide clear guidelines for maintaining it? Users should be informed about what data is collected and how it’s used, having the ability to opt-out at any time.
Even the smallest design choices, like using certain types of search filters or removing unnecessary images, can have a significant environmental impact. We can minimize the digital carbon footprint by creating products that provide value to users, have accessible and optimized content, and are intuitive to use. All in all, it’s about creating World Wide Worth, not World Wide Waste.
7. AI-Driven Design Trend
AI is here; it’s doing well and will be doing even better. There is no way back, but we shouldn’t be afraid of losing our design jobs (at least for now). However, this is also the time for you to shine as a designer and to use the momentum. Become familiar with the opportunities that AI gives and start using it to gain an advantage.
Undoubtedly, AI will maintain one of the hottest UX/UI design trends in 2024, Hence, the two AI-related pieces of news in our ranking! Mateusz has already discussed his predictions about the future of AI in Figma. Let’s move on to how AI abilities and data allow us to analyze user behavior.
Imagine that AI not only gathers real user data faster but can also interpret it and deliver filtered information to us. That makes the challenge of creating user-centered products much easier. We can use this data to implement the UX best practices right from the start (without the need to analyze everything by ourselves) and meet user expectations.
Regarding AI in Visual Design, the GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) boomed. Almost everyone has heard about the Lensa app, where everyone was changing photos to AI-generated avatars. Popularity also gained tools like Mid journey (test it on Discord) or Dall-e 2 (where you can generate images, edit them and expand beyond canvas), and more will be coming. Such tools are gold mines for designers to quickly create images, UI inspirations, or mood boards which you can later use in your projects or as something more controversial – digital posters/assets to sell. I bet that it’s just a matter of time!
Another impressive AI feature is a machine learning algorithm. We can implement it in our app to provide personalized content for every user. Some users love puppy photos? Give them more! Next in line, AI might greatly improve UX by automating repetitive tasks. In the near future, we should be able to use it in our designer’s work process.
Need examples? AI could generate wireframes for our project straight from the data from provided user flow. It’s also worth mentioning its increasing effectiveness in usability testing. Transcription, user preferences analysis – all of that will allow conducting quicker cycles of feedback and validation with much broader groups of respondents.
In the end, I want to cool down the excitement a bit. Keep in mind that AI-generated content may be funky and clumsy (at least for today), so always check it in detail. Remember also to verify the AI-tool copyrights rules before using your AI-generated content in your project!
Undoubtedly, AI will continue to impact the design industry significantly and will remain one of the most sought-after design trends of 2024. Its humongous potential, if used smartly, could streamline processes and take design work to the next level. Personally, I can’t wait to see more AI technologies coming in 2024.
8. Growth Designers Trend
Over the past few years, the UX industry has played a big role in building retention and revenue among digital products. To our advantage, clients and stakeholders have noticed that bad user experience negatively affects businesses.
After the recent rapid changes in the whole IT industry, many companies have been forced to downsize. In such a situation, the design discipline adjusts by focusing more on broader product strategy, growth tactics, marketing, and conversion rate optimizations. That is why a new UI UX design trend and a whole new role – Growth Designer – have been brought to the table.
One of the most significant advantages of a Growth Product Designer is tailoring the product to customers’ needs in the light of business client limitations – specifically in the world of startups and smaller product-led companies.
The Growth Designer is experienced in UI/UX (including animation and interaction design), but even more with product development, experiments, strategic outlook, and business tactics that turn the created designs into real company investments. As a crossover of a few separate roles we have nowadays, Growth Designers seem to be thriving and more beneficial to clients. I think it’s safe to say that in terms of UI UX design trends, 2024 will surely be a year of Growth Designers!
9. Video Content Trend
Is reading the key to boosting user engagement metrics? Well, unfortunately, no. Reading is an effort, and these days, people are effort-weary. They need information faster and faster. So here comes the video content trend!
Short, informative, yet entertaining. When we quickly scroll through videos, our brains get a shot of dopamine and want more. That is why video content does an amazing job of keeping engagement rates high and building habits.
It may seem that we won’t come up with anything new. After all, we’re all familiar with Tiktok or Reels on Instagram. However, I feel that the potential of video content continues to grow. Recently, Amazon announced the introduction of “TikTok shopping”. Products are to be presented as vertical videos instead of photos.
It seems like an experiment that could lead to a significant purchase conversion. On the other hand, maybe next year, we will see a brand new product with video content as a hero feature? I expect that video content will remain a hot design trend in 2024, but also in years to come. Stay tuned!
10. Voice & Conversational User Interfaces in eCommerce
With the immense growth of chat and voice bots market value over the past few years, we can observe more and more ways of implementing those technologies into product design and strategy.
Many studies have shown that people are becoming more open to interaction with voice user interface and tend to choose services and e-commerce platforms with bot support in customer service. Hence the rapid emergence of User Experience and User Interface designdesign trends related to conversational and voice user interfaces (VUI & CUI) in eCommerce.
Following the growing popularity of voice assistants or chatbot integrations, we can expect this technology to evolve and bring even more value. Conversational design, which focuses on creating a human-like interaction with a computer, seems to be a trendy way of implementing bots for users’ convenience and business advantage.
In 2024, we might see platforms that use chat-based conversational UI to create a convenient customer experience. Improving and integrating bots with machine learning may also result in the possibility of personalisation, which could be widely used in e-commerce and the productivity and health sectors.
In addition, voice-enabled UIs make specific contexts of use finally possible. They enable users to operate systems without using their hands or full attention, for example, driving, exercising, or cooking. Moreover, those digital interfaces may be more accessible for people with disabilities or the elderly, for whom using traditional UI might be too demanding.
Therefore, we are no longer asking ourselves whether the bots will be used in the future. In 2024, we are facing the question of how we can use them to create an exceptional user experience.
11. Typography: New Main Hero in Web Design
Typography has been one of the main elements of UI design since its very beginning, so it is not surprising that for some time now, we can observe projects in which this aspect plays a major role in creating the entire visual layer.
Well-used typography can adapt to any situation, brand, or style. It can be elegant or aggressive and eye-catching. Typography fits perfectly into many industries – so no wonder why it has become one of the most significant UI design trends for 2024. Its use can be seen especially by fashion brands, design studios, architectural studios, cultural institutions, and sports brands. I believe that in the coming months, even more industries will reach for the creative use of typography in their projects.
What is the reason behind the rise of typography as the main hero in web design trends in 2024? Many designers, previously involved in designing books or logos, are transferring their previous experience to the digital world. Their skillset allows them to look at website design differently – from a little bit more artsy, analog perspective.
Speaking of the evolution of design, it is also worth understanding the influence of modernism on the use of bold typography. Modernist designers from the beginning of the XXth century indicated a whole new direction in typography for future generations – regardless of their specialization. If you want more background about the 2024 typography trend, be sure to get familiar with Massimo Vignelli and Josef Müller-Brockmann’s works in the first place. Or just read “The New Typography” by Jan Tschichold – to learn how the most important figures in the history of design approached their projects.
Still not an enthusiast of typography-based websites? Try to learn more about the creative process behind complicated yet harmonious and aesthetically pleasing typographic compositions, e.g., from books about modernist design. The knowledge gained in this way might allow you to look at the typography graphic design trend a little differently at the next opportunity.
12. The Future of UX Writing
The importance of UX Writing is continuously growing. A year ago, finding job postings for UX Writers was a struggle, as there were only a few. As of today, more and more people realize the importance of constructing well-thought-out and powerful copy for creating user interfaces, as it can make a real impact on user experience and engagement, as well as conversions in the long run.
When speaking about UX writing, we cannot forget the advances in technology, as more and more AI-based tools, such as Wordtune or Lex, are on the rise. That, in turn, casts doubt on the future of UX writers, whether they will be given help or replaced entirely. One such tool that has been recently arousing emotions among UX Writers and designers, in general, is ChatGPT, an AI-powered contextual chatbot developed by OpenAI. It allows the users to ask the chatbot to answer their questions or perform a task of their wish. The tool can be used for various tasks, including helping you think creatively by coming up with strings of text or even whole articles that could drive your inspiration.
Many agree it’s inevitable that AI-based tools are here to stay and become even more advanced with time, given the fact that the number of users of the ChatGPT surpassed one million in just under five days. Therefore, instead of worrying about being replaced on the market by powerful AI, it’s best to focus on how such tools can be of good help in the everyday work of a UX Writer. Chat GPT may be useful for, among many other use cases, generating multiple language options for different elements in user interface, such as hints or error messages, and leading to the optimization of the user experience of the product.
TOP UI / UX design trends in 2024 summary
Summing up our UI and UX experts’ predictions, we can surely say that 2024 will be all about creativity and out-of-the-box ideas regarding product design, user and web interaction, and intuitiveness. As one of the most famous designers, Lorinda Mamo, states: “Every great design begins with an even better story” we wish 2024 will let you immerse yourself in many great stories!