Mobile App Design Trends 2018

This internet consumption statistics speaks for itself. Mobile overtook desktop already in 2014 and keeps growing.

You definitely need to follow the stream!

Trends in mobile design change all the time. So we decided to tell you about the most important ones.

The Stormotion team analyzed the most common design predictions. That's what we can expect of the Mobile Design Trends.

🤖 Artificial intelligence

Does The Terminator movie scare you? Then be ready to panic now! Smart machines are coming into our lives. Forbes experts say that we will see more artificial intelligence technology in mobile design.

Virtual and augmented reality

One of the most remarkable events in the mobile world in 2016 was the Pokemon Go release. It had the boom effect in the industry. The enthusiasts will definitely try to surpass its success. So augmented reality will be one of the new mobile UI trends for sure.

The technologies like chatbots and voice commands have lots of flaws at present. They are often blamed for the lack of empathy and misunderstandings. Hopefully, they will be improved in the near future.

The necessity of the improved Conversational UX will definitely stimulate the evolution of voice recognition technologies.

📽️ From static to dynamic

Videos instead of images

Mobile users prefer watching videos on their devices over other functions. Just take a look at the statistics below.
The video content sharing via mobile traffic data will definitely grow.

✌️ Gestures

There are two basic gestures for the mobile users - swiping and scrolling. But there are so many gestures we use in our day-to-day life. They could become a part of our mobile experience too!

Nowadays developers will likely be adding new gestures to UI. This will improve usability and retention rates through great user experience. It will become one of the new mobile UX trends.

During the next years we expect the increasing number of apps that will interact with user’s facial gestures. Replacing touch and swipe gestures with facial ones (where it’s possible for now) is going to improve the UX and shape the way we use our mobile applications.

🎨 Design approach

Minimalism

No surprises, minimalism is still trendy in both iOS and Android development. The complex reduction is still a primary task for designers. The content on the screen matters more than an impressive UI design.

Minimalistic design in combination with good usability can turn a simple app into a strong communication or marketing tool. So it'll rule the mobile design world this year.

🤳 Interactive design

It's not a secret that the successful apps are interactive and always dictate trends. Interactivity increases the retention rate of the app as the users become more engaged in it.

Microinteractions

Microinteractions will remain a trend in the modern mobile app design. They give users visual feedback from an app and create the positive user experience.

The sounds in a mobile app

An app can interact with the user not only through visual feedback. The audio effects, even small and tiny, will have a great impact on the user that will increase the retention rate. We believe that sound will be more widely used in the mobile apps.

📲 Changes in navigation

Hidden navigation

Hamburger menu won’t be on our apps anymore. We will have more creative navigation - the hidden menus. It only appears when you tap on a particular area of the screen or use a particular gesture.

The Chrome app already uses hidden navigation.

🙋 User-appropriate design

Failure mapping

While creating UX, designers usually consider perfect users, who follow the designed path on the app. But what if the user goes astray from this path? The need for failure mapping appears here to make sure that even a non-ideal user will have a positive user experience.

✅ Summary

So the latest mobile app design trends 2018 are:

• Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality technologies application for the mobile devices.
• Conversational interfaces and chatbots.
• Video and animation instead of traditional photos.
• Fresh and bright design.
• Interactive UI.
• Smart navigation.
• Design adapted for a user.

Fresh ideas are coming!