Web Design Trends in 2023

2023 has been a happening year in the world of Web Design. There have been rapid changes in the field and new trends came out that took this industry by storm. Trends are a great way to understand what’s happening in the industry and what the things that one should focus on to have more leverage in their job.

In this article, we will discuss what changed in 2023 in the field of design. and we will discuss the top design trends of 2023.

Web Design Trends in 2023

Increased Web Accessibility

In 2023, there has been a lot more focus on the accessibility part of the design. Accessibility is the process of designing websites in an all-inclusive manner. In simpler terms, it means designing for everybody, keeping in mind the people who might have some special needs and taking care of those needs in the product experience and interface. The idea behind Accessible Design patterns is to have such design patterns that make the user feel comfortable and make them feel that the website or application is similar to most of the websites or applications they use in terms of interactions.

Mobile first designs

The mobile-first design approach came into existence ever since the first smartphone was created. However, it started becoming recognized by the designers’ community after Google popularized the mobile-first design in 2010. It has been trending a lot since 2021 and 2023 saw a great boost in mobile-first designs.

Mobile first design as the name suggests is about designing any application, website, or piece of software keeping mobile-friendliness as the main priority and making sure that the design is compatible with smaller screens. In this approach, unlike the traditional approach where we first design for the larger viewports, we may not design for the larger screens first, but rather start with designing the application or website for smaller screens in order to make the application or the website more scalable and reach out to a larger number of audience.

VR design (Virtual Reality Design)

Virtual Reality is a new form of technology that immerses you in a 3-dimensional environment that seems real taking away the limitations of the real world and allowing you to go wherever you want to and see whatever interests you. It is a simulated experience used in multiple industries like the gaming industry, entertainment industry, educational industry, etc. Because of the rapid growth in the Virtual Reality industry, there has been a lot of demand of Virtual Reality designers and with VR becoming more and more popular, designers are jumping into the field of Virtual Reality design making VR design one of the top trends of 2023.

XR design (Extended Reality design)

XR design or Extended Reality design is the process of designing the user experience for XR products and services. In XR design, we design user interfaces, interactions and experiences for products and services in the Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) field. Similar to VR which is a part of XR, XR design is also booming, the reason being that demand of XR designers is a lot while the supply is quite less. There are high quality designs in the field making it quite popular among professional and aspiring designers.

Design thinking

Rather than designing without any strategy, designers are not focused more on design thinking before starting the designing and ideating part. Design thinking is basically a creative way to solve problems. It is the sum of all the processes that results in designing of a prototype, The most important skills for design thinking are – having empathy for the users and prototyping. Design thinking involves of steps like understanding the challenge, defining the problem, coming up with solutions, creating a prototype and at the end testing the prototype and iterating.

Animated Illustrations

In 2023, the Design industry saw more and more companies working on animations and illustrations. Creative movement of text or visuals in a web application to catch the user’s attention or bring the user’s attention to a particular component in the design is called animation. Since web design is all about capturing the user’s attention, it becomes necessary to use animation to communicate the value of our business/our client’s business delightfully. Animations help our users to understand and properly digest what’s happening in the screen. The latest trend shows that companies are moving from using images to using animations in their web design.

Sans Serif Typography

San Serif has been the trending typeface in 2023. “Sans” in the word Sans-Serif in French basically means “without,” therefore, sans-serif typefaces are those that lack serifs. San-serifs fonts are simpler to look and are mostly used as body copy, display and headlines. Sans-Serifs fonts are considered as clean, minimal and modern looking. They were first used in the 15th century. A good example of Sans Serif Typefaces is Helvetica that became quite popular in the year.

Emphasis on Usability testing

Web designers and the companies have now stated focusing extensively on Usability testing. Usability testing is actually a research method for assessing how easy it is for participants to complete the important tasks in a design. During a usability study, participants are provided with the designs/products, and researchers follow participants when they interact with the product/design. All the feedback from the users is then collected and worked upon. There are two types of UI/UX Testing Moderated Testing and Unmoderated Testing. To know more about this read this article on Usability testing.

Conclusion

In 2023, web design became more focused on the user experience and how to the user interacts with the website or application. The web treads in the year were focused on design practices like Usability testing, Mobile first designs, Web Accessibility etc. which improve the interactions with the website or the application. Also since the market of XR design has been increasing, VR design and XR design was also treading in the industry. Hopefully these insights helped you understand the trends in web design and where the design industry is going as of 2023.