Reflections and predictions on how UX/UI will evolve in 2023, Aliaksandr Soryn, Head of Design at Godel Technologies.

What are the biggest UX/UI trends you have seen over the past year?

Last year was really interesting and brought a lot of different events, both positive and negative that affected the UX/UI area. First of all, businesses are counting their money more than ever and investing in product development, user research and building products for end users, which was observed even in B2B projects. Let’s take a closer look at some key trends over the last year:

Voice User Interface (VUI) – It has gained popularity thanks to Siri, Amazon Alexa, and the Google Nest devices. But in the upcoming year, expectations are and will be higher, providing more features and integrations that support and serve people.

Inclusivity – This means approaching the design and development of web pages and mobile apps with an “inclusivity mindset”, something that was mentioned in last year’s Godel Usability Week. I strongly believe it is not only a buzz word but the direction we should go as designers.

Metaverse – I heard about it a lot this year and it made a lot of buzz in the design world. I will expect it to have more impact in the upcoming years.

What should designers do to stay ahead of customer expectations?

If you want to build a product which fits the market, your first employee should be a product designer who will also do discovery. The product designer should check and review what is going on in the design area. If we talk about product design, designers need to understand how to convert their ideas with no-code solutions to quickly check hypotheses.

– Designers should follow the trends, adopt the best patterns and understand people, creating personas but also observing, learning and studying their behaviours and habits. Every human is different, but we are able to distinguish certain groups of behaviour as we can be predictable in terms of using digital products.

– Be in constant contact with the customer, collect feedback, and conduct customer research to know their previous experience if there is one. Listen first, speak second and repeat the cycle.

– Have empathy and ask about business goals, gain domain and product knowledge. Work together as a team, not as a buyer and customer, ask opinions and show work in progress in the early stages. Don’t wait for a “ready” solution and be open to sharing drafts.

What are your predictions for where UX/UI is heading in 2023?

1. Virtual reality and user behaviour: I see a new round of development in virtual reality and user behaviour data analysis and huge growth in immersive design where VR/AR/MR is a huge part. Sustainability and eco designs have had a good start and continued growth in the past year and I think it will also be a trend for the next year.

2. Inclusivity, Accessibility and Diversity: We will aim to be more diverse, more inclusive and more accessible. It is happening more but still requires some time to get to the point where we incorporate it into our usual UX design process.

3. Moving away from image-based prototyping: It is more efficient to test and use code-based prototypes, not only fake image-based prototypes to get a more realistic experience. I believe that conducting Usability Testing on real products will become more and more popular. It does not mean we will drop Figma and ProtoPie prototypes, but we will strive for more realistic behaviour using real products.

The demand for UI/UX will increase as technologies develop and services which were not available in the past are becoming our present and future.

In this case, new services/technologies = new user experience = more UX designers. Talking about sensational AI, I am sure that in the near future, designers will have more tools based on artificial intelligence. It doesn’t mean that AI will replace UX/UI designers, it will replace a mouse and keyboard, but the world still will need these specialists.