The mobile app industry is booming business. Its market size for 2022 surpassed 161 billion dollars, and within the next decade thereafter, projections indicate a mammoth financial potential of 1,191.44 billion. To create apps that resonate well with the market and get to a share of this financially-rewarding cake, developers or companies must stay ahead of the curve. As a mobile app development agency, here are some mobile app design trends we feel will define the industry in 2023 and perhaps even beyond.
Chatbots for support continuum
Customer service or app support isn’t always available. That’s where mobile app chatbots step in to plug the gap. A chatbot, or conversational AI of some sort, can improve engagement while increasing user activity within the app.
Developers today are leveraging mobile app chatbots to:
- Collect user data for updates or improvements
- Nurture leads and prompt in-app purchases
- Handle simple user queries and much more
While chatbots have raised concerns about depriving that intimate human touch, the fact is that over 6 in 10 app users would rather talk to a chatbot than wait on human response.
Flat design is circling back
Flat design mobile app development has been around for a while. Nevertheless, it is a formula that fell down the pecking order as technology evolved and developers leaned toward more complex experimentations.
But, in 2023, the minimalist approach it provides is once more becoming popular. Moreso with poor mobile optimization off-putting 48% of app users, according to a Think With Google report.
A flat design, true to its word, entails keeping the UI restricted to a simple, clean, and 2-dimensional format. For what this strategy lacks in depth, developers often make up for it by creatively working around colors, fonts, and other visual aspects. Additionally, a flat design also means UI with plenty of white space and more conservative aesthetics.
Personalization kicking into high gear
On the Play Store alone, the average developer is staring at over 3.5 million apps. Even if you zero in on a particular niche or category, the competition is still within the range of thousands of alternatives.
Personalization can be the differentiating factor, helping to meet specific user needs and preferences to ensure better user acquisition and loyalty. Here are some tactics app developers are using to implement app personalization:
- Personalizing push notifications
- Implementing audience segmentation
- Unique offers and discounts
- Optimization & A/B testing
App design going dark
Is dark mode a trend for 2023? Yes, and with great reason. Since 2013, average daily screen time has been on an upward trajectory. Worldwide in 2023, people spend just shy of 7 hours of their wakeful time behind a screen.
Dark app modes or themes are increasingly popular as people seek to cushion themselves from eye strain and other vision problems that arise with extended screen time.
Beyond cutting down on exposure to blue light – the constituent of light believed to be harmful to our vision- dark themes can also overall increase an app’s user-friendliness. It’s such a popular design element, given the fact that close to 82% of smartphone users today leverage dark themes.
Increased focus on voice interfaces
Effortless and convenient, it’s no suppress that voice assistances like Siri and Alexa are fan favorites. In America, 7 in 10 people prefer voice over hand typing, which goes to show the potential for voice-capable UI design.
This is a trend fast taking shape in 2023 because of the many conveniences it affords. In a nutshell, voice interactions can make your app:
- Minimally disruptive
- Hands-free
- Eye-free
- Quicker to use
If you’ve never spared a thought for mobile app voice interfaces, now’s the perfect time to revise your approach toward design to ensure your application provides more value to your users.
Development on the fly with hot reload
Hot reload is a concept that’s today popular with cross-platform Flutter app development. In the conventional developer workflow, code updates entailed making changes to your code base and then having to reload the entire app for any changes you’ve made to take effect (live reload).
This approach can be inconvenient and time-consuming for developers, which is why app development is significantly gravitating toward hot reload. It spares us from the pain-staking trouble synonymous with live reloading.
Hot reload allows developers to make tweaks to their code and instantly see the changes on their apps without having to reload everything from scratch. It’s a great way to ease and swiften bug fixing, UI building, feature addition, and much more. Overall, it allows us to quickly experiment and test out ideas with instant results.
Asymmetrical design for out-of-the-box creativity
Rules are meant to be broken and asymmetrical elements are helping developers push the envelope in imaginative and enthralling ways. Symmetrical designs have long been the staple of app design. Sure, they offer a level of harmony, order, and balance.
But being ordinary is no way to stand out. Hence, many app developers in 2023 are thinking out of the box by taking the once less-trodden asymmetrical design path. This has meant the use of:
- Contrasting colors
- Shapes beyond borders
- Line weight adjustments
- Irregular sizing and much more
All in all, asymmetrical design is all about coloring outside the lines, in a way that dynamically pushes the norm of what’s expected. It’s a great way to guide eye focus to an area of the UI with particular importance or to just give your app that wow factor.
Mobile app design is always in flux
The only constant in app development is things will change. For 2023, hot reload development, chatbot-driven apps, flat designs, and personalization are defining the order of the day.
But trends come and go. While some withstand the test of time, others quickly slip out of focus as end-user preferences change or as technological evolutions take a different turn. To keep in touch with the latest trends, you need to regularly check in on one of the best blogs for mobile app development. Keep it here to never get caught off-guard and instead always keep your app development skills miles ahead of disruptions.