User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) Design is a constantly evolving, required discipline in all domains of technology. It is heavily focused towards interfaces in software, websites and applications and as such, becomes heavily involved in many facets of our work and planning. It is firstly important we understand and explain this and then turn our attention towards the shifting trends from 3D design towards flat designs.
UI elements are buttons, typography, color palettes, shapes, icons, etc. and they form an integral part of the design process. Both elements are crucial to a product and work closely together. But despite their professional relationship, the roles themselves are quite different, referring to very different parts of the process and the design discipline. Where UX Design is a more analytical and technical field, UI Design is closer to what we refer to as graphic design, though the responsibilities are somewhat more complex.
The feeling of familiarity with tech products had led to many trends anywhere from three-dimensional buttons and textured backgrounds to drop-shadows giving a false sense of depth. There is no reason from a technological standpoint for any of this, but it quickly became a trend for companies to make their websites look like you could reach right in and interact with it. The reason for this, primarily is due to the early days of user interfaces. Most screens have employed three dimensional effects. These include things such as drop shadows, gradients and highlights to help users understand the available actions at a glance.
The idea of Flat Design came from focusing more on usability, and less on familiarity. This philosophy is that our minds don’t need complex visual cues to understand what we are looking at. We are perfectly capable of recognizing shapes and giving them meaning with minimal cues By minimizing design, we are removing unnecessary distractions that otherwise have no definitive purpose and may only distract us from the purpose of the application. Plus, with responsive design becoming so important, flat design makes it much easier to adjust to multiple screen sizes without the extra unnecessary grap
One of the first big uses of flat design came from Google. With Google, information is presented to us in a very clean and usable way using simple icons and clean, readable text. Apple were also a major player in pushing this trend with the iPhone iOS update in 2013. This can also be seen with the change in design of the Calculator App as a very good example of these design shifts. In the same way we have the ability to read words on a page with the letters jumbled and having only the first and last letter as our guide, identifying major brands with simpler designs has become more commonplace with a focus on modern simplicit
We keep in touch with modern trends with our website design services and an example of this can be seen with our project for Dimensions Network. They are essentially a new generation of cryptocurrency exchange which features a unique platform with a unique visual identity and user-friendly interface design. Please visit this project at the link at the bottom or get in touch with us to discuss these concepts and how we can assist with your design process.
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