UX and UI Design Trends to stick with in 2023

Personalization has risen in popularity in 2021/22, and no, this does not simply mean putting someone's name to a user interface. Companies utilise both first-party and third-party data to personalise user experiences depending on user behaviour and browsing patterns.

Netflix is an excellent example of product personalisation. Because the computers recommend programming depending on your watching behaviour, no two accounts appear same. Amazon follows a similar strategy, personalising each shopper's homepage depending on their purchase and browsing history.

While cross-platform apps are not a new concept, many products are sluggish to deliver consistent user experiences across numerous devices, namely desktop vs. mobile/tablet. Products that limit the services and features that mobile consumers may access risk losing clients to competitors who can!

Cross-platform experiences are not limited to desktop-to-mobile interactions. Product designers must consider mobile-to-desktop connectivity. If you just have a mobile app, it may be time to consider PC users--a trend Instagram claims is rising!

Scrolling combined with narrative results in scrollytelling. By no means a new trend, but one that is gaining traction. The AirPods Max landing page from Apple is an excellent example of scrollytelling. As you browse down the website, gorgeous product photos show various features and benefits.

Even government organisations, such as the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics (ONS), employ the immersive scrolling approach to educate the public on public issues. "The strength of the scrollytelling style is its capacity to captivate the reader and bring a tale to life...Articles with interactive'scrollytelling' are an excellent method to explain and explore complex datasets."

We continue the subject of storytelling with data storytelling. This trend is described by Microsoft as "...creating a compelling narrative based on complex data and analytics that help tell your story and influence and inform a specific audience."

Data storytelling isn't new in commercial product design, but we're seeing it gain traction in consumer digital goods, most notably activity-related applications like Apple Health, Whoop, Garmin, Strava, and others. People are obsessed with statistics and data!

Minimalism is a trend that is here to stay! In mid-2022, YouTube updated its user interface design to a more contemporary, minimalist black and greyscale style. The old YouTube-red subscribe button has been replaced with black, and secondary CTAs are now black on grey. YouTube's black and greyscale UI enables a smooth user experience between bright and dark themes--dark mode is a prominent trend in recent years. Many websites and digital goods use a black and greyscale version. The advantage of this minimal colour palette is that UI designers may use a single colour to highlight critical CTAs and features, as seen in this example from the blogging site Ghost.

Brian de Haaff, co-founder and CEO of premier product development software Aha!, created the term Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) in 2013 and discussed it in his best-selling book, Lovability: How to Build a Business People Love and Be Happy Doing It.

The concept behind MLP is to focus on developing product experiences that consumers appreciate rather than rushing to market with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

What does this signify for user interface designers?

"Trendy apps have hooked us on instant, bite-sized gratification, and in the coming year, as new ideas and innovations emerge, we'll see more of the minimum lovable product approach - shipping smaller, faster slices to test the market before going all-in." What a fantastic