These are my thoughts on design trends and what will happen with them in the future. So here goes.
Web 2.0
So it kinda starts here as trends go. Skeumorphism and all that follows was popular for a reason. It made the web feel handmade and immersive when done right. The sites that had good designers behind them were like works of art. And browsing them was such a nice experience. And then overkill. Glows, shadows, flash etc... It all started to kill performance. Loading a site that had over 10+ MB of PNG's and flash loading for those nice little details was slow and it started to feel sluggish. The speed of internet connections just wasn't up to the challenge. What now? Well here comes the flat train.
Flat
It started trickling down from good web designers/developers. Site speed and performance is a MASSIVE part of a high traffic website. So flat made that possible. A beautiful site with CSS and CSS only. CSS3 was a huge boost for this trend to start! No more flash, big files... Just CSS3 and you could make an amazing experience work with a couple lines of code. That's fast! A nicely done flat website can be under 200kb in assets and that's awesome for speed and performance!
What users expect
A fast website. Slow sites are out. This infographic by KISS metrics proves my point. Make your site fast and lean!
KISS Metrics Blog Post About Load Times
What comes next?
Internet speeds are improving and content is shifting to more immersive platforms. Mobile, tablets, and wearables are changing how we digest the web. I think skeumorphism will come back. Because if done right it can create an awesome visual experience with all it's bells and whistles. So yes, I can't wait for that day. When our bandwidth allows us to create interfaces out of this world. And I don't mean pretty PNG's and transitions. I mean the next era... When site experiences will be written in 3D game engines and will allow us to provide users with a fast and immersive experience like no other. I'm really excited about our industry's future. How about you?
Would love to hear your thoughts on what is going to be the next thing on the web!
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Posted 7 years ago
Edu
Muito bom
Posted 9 years ago
Christer Johansson
3D would be cool on shopping sites, but I doubt it will work. How the web will evolve from this point is really dependant on browsers development, what kind of features they offer and how well the interpret web developers code, and follow a set standard so everyone can use it. But it is very nice to see that flash-crap being replaced by css3 and html5. I do however see how there will be options for viewing the web in 3D in the near future, you view your website in 3D through Firefox already (It's not pretty, but is "3D-layers"). Mobile viewers and interactions will surely play a bigger role, with integration to cameras, gps, wifi and whatnot. Some brands even offer a sort of 3D display on their smart phones, which can be useful when looking at that new shiny watch you want to buy on eBay or Amazon. I can see how we interact more with our real lives, like Google Ingress.com for example, an interesting way of using maps, gps and 3D effects. Mobile apps can create a bridge from Internets flat world to our real world 3D. We will see social interactions increase as well, with video chatting, voice comms and all sorts of integration with the web and gaming. Check out the documentary about Internets wonder kids, they have some really interesting ideas about our future.
Posted 9 years ago
Roy
Yeah, I can visualise it already! :-) Can you dribbble this? ;-)
Posted 9 years ago
Zan
Imagine opening amazon.com and having 3D glasses on. Walking through isles and looking at actual products. That's insane! A looong time away but still :) Thanks for the feedback Roy!
Posted 9 years ago
Roy
Hi Zan, Very interesting what the future has in stock for the web. I have thought about this myself since the flat design is immense popular for some time now...time to move on! :-) Using 3D game engines for web seems a logical next step to enrich the user experience, however I doubt whether this concept will be embraced all over. For example, looking at e-commerce; the power of the current flat design is that it offers (amongst other things) a distract-free page, which has a positive effect on conversion. What do you think is next thing for the commercial aspect of webdev?
Posted 9 years ago