The average person spends over four hours on their phone each day, according to a recent study from Nielsen.
Michelle Fork, a product designer at Hinge, wants to change that.
“We want our users to use Hinge to make meaningful connections and then get off the app,” Fork said. To her, good design includes a social responsibility that does not encourage users to feed their digital addictions.
Both Fork and Anne Marie Leahey, a senior user experience design consultant at Kin + Carta, agreed that designers need to collaborate with developers and harness user insights to achieve ideal UX design experiences. As well, they are prioritizing accessibility and inclusive design to reach a wide range of users.
We picked the designers’ brains on the major UX design trends they’re watching in 2020. They shared what technologies they’re excited about and how they’ll be incorporating them into their products and features in the future.
Hinge is a dating app designed to get people offline and spending more time on actual dates. To incorporate that mission into UX design, Michelle Fok, product designer, focuses on design inclusivity, which means considering all different types of users and being extra sensitive to blind spots and biases.
What UX design trends are you watching in the year ahead and why do you think these trends will be important?
The two that are top of mind are digital wellness and inclusive design. As users become more aware of their relationship with their phones, we have a social responsibility to make sure we’re building products that aren’t feeding into digital addiction. Being inclusive in our designs means we’re considerate of all of our users and extra sensitive to blind spots and biases we might have.
We want our users to use Hinge to make meaningful connections and then get off the app.’’
How do you plan to incorporate these UX trends into the products/features your team is building in 2020?
For digital wellness, we really want to live up to our brand mission of “designed to be deleted.” We want our users to use Hinge to make meaningful connections and then get off the app. More time on dates and less time on the app — that is what’s grounding our focus for the features we want to ship this year.
We’ll be able to further incorporate inclusive design decisions as we collaborate with more teams that have insights into real user sentiment. I’m excited to be working more closely with our newly formed community and research labs teams this year. With these resources, we’ll be able to gain better insight into the ever-changing state of modern dating.
Kin + Carta works with Fortune 500 companies to create digitally transformative solutions, always with a focus on the end-user's experience. Senior User Experience Design Consultant Anne Marie Leahey said focusing on their users and the craft remains paramount today in good UX design.
What UX design trends are you watching in the year ahead and why do you think these trends will be important?
We’ve arrived at an exciting crossroads where design, strategy, research, business and data are all solidly within the purview of UX. There’s an opportunity for designers to level up their existing knowledge in these areas to be true strategic business partners and apply UX at the highest levels. We have the ability to do this quite naturally, given our instincts for creative, empathetic solutions and the ability to quickly distill complex information and problems — all while remaining the strongest advocate in the room for our users. These dedicated roles have been cropping up for UX strategists and business designers, and we’ll likely continue to see them grow.
Apart from these newly evolving UX roles, a focus on our craft remains paramount. Expertise and finesse in prioritizing accessibility in the products and experiences we create will continue to take center stage.
Apart from these newly evolving UX roles, a focus on our craft remains paramount.’’
How do you plan to incorporate these UX trends into the products/features your team is building in 2020?
With a focus on prioritizing accessibility in our work, my team has been collaborating closely with our cross-functional teammates to work in an accessibility-first mindset. We’ve also been partnering even closer with our developers to create the best solutions, coded in the smartest ways. We’ve also been practicing what we preach within our internal endeavors, and have put accessibility at the forefront of our exciting work to come throughout 2020.
In terms of continued growth for UX strategist and business designer roles, my team actively defines these roles in the ways we can apply and maximize value for our users and our clients. We’ll continue to refine and iterate how we develop these roles, and prioritize creating pathways and training for designers who want to progress their career paths in this direction.
