Top 13 mobile design trends for 2021

When it comes to user interface designing for mobile website and apps, even the littlest of advancement can make you stand out. Attention to details enhances the user experience. A client-centric UI becomes bestselling because of its captivating contents. The aspects of the UI are responsible for the first impression of any web application and in turn, its parent brand. Along with the looks of the platform, it is vital for its framework to align with all the design guidelines which organize & structurize the application content. This is what popularizes any web product.

The world of technology sees fresh growth every day. And each new development impacts the design trends of mobile applications. Actually, the field of UI is the most evolving one, and it successively evolves the other features as well.

For your product to leave a mark, you need to constantly lookout & learn the hottest market trends. Keep tabs on everything: what’s new, what’s obsolete, what made through the cut & how it survived the sands of times. Your designing manual has to keep pace with the current market. You have to prioritize on the mobile first design approach in order to be successful in today’s time.

With all that being said, let us introduce you to the fan-favourite designs tricks of 2021. This article brings to you those elite trends that are ready to take charge. Master these and be ready to skyrocket your business.

The Dark Theme

The dark mode became everyone’s fav in no time. If we look at it in general, it is just a display setting. But it is so slick that it is being eminently prefered and demanded.

The dark theme is known by many names:

• Dark mode
• Night mode
• Black mode
• Light-on-dark

Be it tech giants like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or the OS’s like Apple and Google or small businesses, everyone is offering users forms of the dark theme. Which means the dark mode is here to stay.

This cool aesthetic is not just gorgeous but has many pros too.

• Dark mode makes vibrant thumbnails highlighted and thus pop out.
• It relaxes the eyes by reducing strain from blue light.
• A dark theme protects crucial information in a dark environment.
• Helps retain the device battery by softening the light pixels.

Time for AR, VR & 3D 

Immersive 3D graphics make the objects on your apps come alive, making it easier to catch user attention and implant the brand name. Custom animations invoke vigorous user interest & interactions making the app screens more distinctive and attractive. For instance, check out this app screen having 3D presentation:

Augmented and Virtual reality is gaining a lot of fame among developers and users. Integrating a physical environment with fictional design elements creates a stunning look and engages the users actively with the products & services.

AR & VR also present the massive scope for inventing more apps while ensuring the smooth running of existing ones. Both of these hugely benefit the fields of education, eCommerce, retail, real estate travel, entertainment, science, mHealth and many more.

Neumorphism

As you can see in the above image, Neumorphism has revamped the simplified buttons & icons. It is a subtle touch that is created by influencing shadow and light. Neumorphism creates a soft interface, and the UI elements are placed behind it; not in the background.

This lush new app style draws from both skeuomorphism and flat design blends them and introduces a dimensional makeover while also retaining the originality of its source.

Micro-interactions

We come across these on a daily basis. A simple scroll bar, interactive error pages (remember that dinosaur game we can play on Chrome), swipe gestures, the LIKE button- all these are micro-interactions. Basically any tiny little transition through which users constantly get to know what happens when an action is performed. They’re so obvious and natural that their glory often goes unnoticed. But they are indispensable.

Comfortable visuals

Long hours on our phones strains our eyes. And this is the reality of today. We are all fixated on our phones for a major portion of the day. As such, eye strain reduction is the current need. Thus app designers everywhere are intending to provide a more comfortable viewing experience by means of soothing, natural colours and simple layouts that are easy on our eyes. These calming designs enable the users to look at the screen for longer without feeling uneasy.

The art of Story-telling

Designers work so hard to build an introductory platform that would make the brand spectacular. For sinking into the memory of the audience, the best way is to make users associate with your products or services and feel like they are part of them.

Stories on the landing pages as an introduction to the brand, product or new service prove to extremely effective to engage users. This efficient marketing tool’s purpose is transferring data to the users in a charming as well as child-like manner while being thoroughly informative at the same time. Storytelling really helps to evoke positive emotions and relationships between the brand and its clients.

Data visualization

Adding a little art to your analytics makes the data presentation real fun. Data visualization uses alluring types of graphs, animations and bright visuals to demonstrate data. This way the statistics become more refreshing and the required information reaches the users in a more appealing style.

Creatively Askew Layouts 

With the design elements set at an angle that doesn’t follow the conventional right angle rules, designers are literally and metaphorically making things more exciting by adding asymmetry into their designs. Just a little bit of practice breaking the confines of traditional layouts and you can come up with a design that is so magnetic that it instantly draws users’ eyes. This design trend stands out because of its dynamic & explorative nature that has a hint of rebellion.

Voice Commands

This tech innovation deserves a special shoutout. Voice powered applications are getting phenomenally more prevailing with each passing day. Smart home devices such as Nest, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Siri are already being dominated by voice searching alone. Combining voice technology and pre-set commands will make the integration even smoother giving a strong build to the brand.

Minimalism

Minimalism is about only keeping what’s strictly necessary for the functioning of the website or app thus making the interface as simple as it needs to be. The more minimalistic the interface is, the more time and effort it takes to make it clear and functional. When the public is getting bombarded with stressing digital inflow, stripping down to the bare essentials is more welcomed.

Personalize using AI

Gone are the days when the developer had to brainstorm to think of every possible user wish. Now we can employ artificial intelligence to tailor down the service based on the user preference pattern and get customers with a fraction of the work to be done. It reduces the gap between humans and machine interfaces.

For example, movie lists and weekly music picks on many apps are a great implementation of AI. Language translation, facial recognition, automatic captioning are also some of the miracles of AI.

Captivating swiping and buttonless design

What’s that thing that has made mobiles and tablets win over the desktop as the desktop can’t provide it? It is Swiping. Clicking was the mode of digital travel until it was succeeded by the more fun element of swipe. Swiping frees up more screen space, therefore, giving content to the spotlight. The liquid swipe effect tops digital buttons as it takes gestures’ use to a level further.

There are numerous strategies to upgrade your swiping experiences like adding an animation to your swipes or something relating to the functionality of your app to modernize user tasks.

Leading designers always look ahead. That’s what makes them outstanding. Although forecasting the future of designing is a tough task, but with the app design trends of 2021 in mind, we can say that designers will always follow the shared goal of making app usage more comfortable, engaging and delightful. UI/UX Design gains the user’s confidence. Hence, involving creativity to amaze & mesmerize clients translate into a large scale brand exposure and ultimately a healthy bottom line.

Responsive Websites and Web Applications

A website that is up to the latest trend and is not responsive, is a complete fail. A website ought to be responsive now because we cannot determine the source from where our user is visiting the site. We can use tools to determine whether your website is responsive or not.

LT Browser is the tool you can use to check the responsiveness and compatibility of your application on different mobile devices. Also, you can customize the device of your choice if the size and dimensions of your device are not available on the list.

The awesomeness of LT Browser doesn’t end here. This tool comes with an in-built debugging tool that helps the users to debug their code in a few easy steps only. Users can also see the side-by-side mobile view of any website and can compare them easily. In case a bug pop-ups and you are not able to solve it, then you can share the same with your colleagues or teammates using LT Browser. Users can also perform hot reloads and can analyse the behaviour of the website under various network conditions like 3G, 4G, offline mode and, wi-fi. You can even design and develop responsive web applications using LT Browser. Isn’t it a box full of magic!