The Future of User Experience is Visual Design

We once lived in a technological era where users and customers were thrilled by new features in technology products. Above all, they took delight in the mere ability to successfully finish their tasks with these products. There appears to be a consensus that user experience has taken center stage, and technology has become a medium, and in the process, invisible. However, to sustain a good user experience, it’s not enough to simply “hide” the technology. Instead, you have to make it smarter and more sophisticated!

Today, what was once considered a delighter, has become a basic need. This is especially true of user experience for digital products. So, what’s next? As you guessed from the title, a new era of Visual Design Experience is coming! An era where the users want to be delighted visually, raising the expectations from user experience.

“In coming years, we will see highly colorful designs, and crazy motion UIs.”

iOS7 is a great example. Apple designers used over-saturated colors that made iOS6 look old and unattractive instantaneously. They added huge amount of new transitions. And this is it, most of iOS7 was a huge motion and face lift. Even the Parallax gimikification feature made its job in marketing buzz. Apple even sacrificed some of the usability just to make sure these delighters got into the new version.

The trend is abvious when you see big motion graphics comapnies like Territory Studio and Perception, getting into software user expereince design field. Perception’s design lab has been collaborating with some of the largest technology and software companies on earth (Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and many more) to conceptualise next generation user experiences for mobile and desktop platforms. http://experienceperception.com is a nice place where one could experience some of these.

“The trend is abvious when you see big motion graphics companies like  Perception, getting into software user experience design field.”

Iron Man 2, by Perception for Marvel Entertainment

The Mill, an end-to-end visual effect studio, has great talents and abilities to produce awesome experiences. And now expanding their boundaries to new digital spaces.

The Mill Touch

Another evidance is that Visual Effects professionals and 3D Artists are shifting towards the user experience field, is Education. Digital Tutors, who making high quality online videos, (if i recall right, since 2004) for artists and designers in animation, movies and games industries are now making videos for web/mobile designers. Videos on how to make responsive design, build interactive prototypes and more. I my self, a 3D Artist and Technical Director who did the shift to UX.

“Visual Effects and 3D Artists are shifting toward the user experience field”

If you combine this fact plus the fact that the animation industry is in troubles, as a result many talented artists are being laid off, you can assume that nice portion of these artists will find their way to Visual Design/UX field.

Guardians of the Galaxy Screens by Territory for Marvel

User Experience field that grew from Usability Experts, Graphic Designers, Programmers and others, now has a new boost of Animators, Visual Effects, Game and 3D Artists.

“Is not enough to create best flow for the user and put the right tools in right context at perfect timing.”

Back to Apple. If you look at AppleWatch designs they are showcasing on apple.com/watch/, you will see designs with lots of vivid colors, with staturation values above 70 and brightness above 90 on most main UI elements. Motion design is used as one of the main delighters to stir users’ emotions.

Screen recording from www.apple.com/watch/new-ways-to-connect/

Take a look at dribbble.com, the animated UI designs are most popular.
Saijo George created an epic list of input fields that most of it is about motion graphics: https://medium.com/@saijogeorge/creative-form-input-field-design-examples-bfe5dd50808a

It’s not enough to create best flow for the user, put the right tools in right context at perfect timing. We have to think harder how to delight users.

In coming years, we will see highly colorful designs, and crazy motion UIs in our Mobile, Web and Desktop apps.