Following the state of the art in digital product design means chasing a moving target. Best practices and dominant ideas keep changing, year after year, and it pays to keep an eye on the trends that have become prominent across industries and organization types.

The key to following product design trends is to remember that not every change will relate directly to your work. You need to remain guided by what's best for your users and your brand as a whole. 

This year, many designers will commit to making their products accessible to the broadest possible audience, all while keeping their organizational goals in mind. With that said, there are numerous ideas worth tracking in 2024.

What are 2024's top product design trends?

When considering product design in 2024, it's worth noting that some ideas from 2023 or earlier will remain strong as the year goes on. For instance, an evolved form of user-centric design has been a leading fixation for years now and remains influential.

On the other hand, a few of the concepts drawing designers' attention are relatively new. As an example, the rapid development of fresh new use cases for artificial intelligence over the past few months has made companies and individuals rethink their approaches to both design and development.

Some leading trends to watch closely in 2024 include:

Inclusive UX writing 

User experience writing has become an ever-greater priority as the years have gone on. While this evolution has been steady, it's ready to come to the forefront in 2024. Design teams are committing to releasing their digital products with consistent, inclusive UX writing that doesn't make assumptions about users and welcomes the widest possible audience. Focus areas in UX writing include:

• Use of dedicated writers: A significant sign of change in UX writing is the rise of the dedicated UX writer position. Rather than treating content creation as an afterthought, companies are putting effort and resources into this part of the design process, considering it a major priority and an integral part of designing a high-quality product.
  
  In addition to being more inclusive and welcoming to users, professional UX writing introduces consistency into design. When features are labeled the same way throughout a product, it helps create a smooth user experience — this is the kind of issue that may have gone unaddressed in an earlier era of product design.

• Responses to new tech: New technology integrations have also driven fresh trends in UX writing. For example, the use of artificial intelligence features demands a UX that provides users with full transparency. The UX must convey to users how the AI algorithm collects and safeguards data, while also detailing processes around error reporting and onboarding. It must also be clear how the AI makes its decisions, and how to override those choices. Conveying all this information in a minimal, clear way is a UX writing priority.

Accessibility

In 2024 companies are advancing their accessibility efforts. Across most regulatory areas, accessibility is not yet mandated or dictated by official rules. This means design teams committing to accessible design are ahead of the curve, but also not driven by specific standards. 

Designers are rethinking some of the major visual UI norms of the past few years and reconsidering them through the lens of accessibility and user comfort. This means treating standards like Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as starting points and going further. For example, while WCAG mandates the use of color contrast to help colorblind users comprehend data visualizations, designers are investigating even more accessible visuals, such as dedicated spacing, patterns, different shapes and lines on graphs and visualizations.

AI integration into workflows

AI is the hottest trend in technology across sectors and segments. Rapid development in AI processing power and increased access to high-tech generative algorithms have naturally influenced design workflows, though not without some controversy. For instance, companies are hesitant to train AI on material that contains sensitive information. There are facets of the AI explosion worth monitoring, such as:

• The potential for further functional growth: Considering the rapid rate at which AI-powered design and development aids are growing in power and sophistication, 2024 is poised to be the year in which these tools gain wider acceptance and uptake. AI's present-day role as a productivity aid could seem quaint by the end of 2024, as developers race to create ever more powerful models capable of handling larger business functions.

• The need for new skill sets: One strong possibility is that AI knowledge will become an ever-more important skill for designers to possess, alongside other tech proficiencies. As employers become more comfortable allowing AI into design workflows, and the tools grow stronger and more accurate, working with these solutions will be an in-demand ability.

Evolving user-centric design

Some trends set to dominate design thinking in 2024 are more continuations and evolutions of existing industry ideas than truly new concepts. The best example of this theme may be the way design teams are approaching user-centricity, an idea that has shaped their overall strategy for years, becoming especially notable around 2015. The 2024 version of this concept means:

• User-centric design has merged with the pursuit of business value: Today's approach involves designers serving two different objectives at once, designing with user-centricity as the primary goal and shaping their approach to target the business's overall needs.

• Long-term commitments remain consistent: Since user-centric design is a broad concept and philosophy, rather than a specific technology or feature to integrate, it makes sense that it has remained part of the design ethos for so long. While more micro-level trends have come and gone, this macro-level focus on designing to suit users' needs has remained in place. 

Visual minimalism

Software visual interface design is entering a period of minimalism and simplification. This represents a contrast to some of the trends that predominated in the past few years. Designs featuring glass morphism, with numerous levels resembling glass panes, experienced a wave of popularity that has since receded. Notable sub-trends include:

• The move away from glass morphism: The complex and multi-level designs based on heavy use of glass morphism were often eye-catching and attractive, but they came with drawbacks. These options were relatively difficult to code, and they could have negative effects on apps' accessibility. In response, designers are paring back and favoring visual minimalism as 2024 begins.

• Declining use of stock photos: Another visual trend is a switch away from stock imagery as a UI element. Rather than turning to stock pictures, designers are choosing to either use custom illustrations or not have representational pictures in their interfaces at all. When savvy users see the same stock imagery in multiple apps, it can lessen the appeal of those designs — designers are no longer risking that happening.

How are organizations implementing the latest design trends?

The move toward this year's dominant design trends, especially in terms of accessibility and inclusivity, is not being driven by specific triggers such as a major shift in user feedback or regulatory pressure from agencies. Rather, organizations are falling into step with overall philosophical shifts in their industries.

Reaching the broadest possible user base through designs that follow best practices is a philosophy driving designers' efforts. This has manifested in both long-term trends such as user-centric design and more recent efforts such as the deemphasis on glass morphism.

It's important to remember that not every business will take on tech trends with the same speed or priority. Often, the difference comes down to scale:

• Enterprises: Some large enterprises are slow to take on the latest design trends. These businesses may be held back by regulations in their highly developed industries, or inflexible legacy infrastructure. They tend to gravitate toward previous trends that have been vetted and proven valuable. This has positives and negatives. On the positive side, less focus on chasing trends means fewer wasted investments. As for the negatives, this slow pace can leave enterprises behind the curve.
• Startups: Startups with less legacy infrastructure in place and more of a blank canvas can afford to attack current trends more directly. Without years of precedent or large workforces to train, these businesses may feel a mandate to pivot rapidly and take on new practices that can assist them. These businesses need to balance the risk of investing in untested technologies against the potential to deliver innovative products enabled by the latest tech.

How can designers keep up with 2024's top trends?

On an individual designer level, it pays to be unafraid to acquire new skills and pursue self-guided training offerings. Designers eager to take this approach today can start dabbling in skills based around new technology areas, for instance, integrating generative AI tools into everyday workflows.

AI is not the only rising tech area that could prove relevant. With a new wave of more user-friendly augmented reality and virtual reality hardware on the horizon, immersive UX design may soon be an in-demand area of expertise.

In the 2024-2025 job market, design teams may be looking for personnel who know their way around three-dimensional design, anticipating more interest in AR and VR software. Staying aware of changing trends as they break is a valuable practice for designers eager to ride the next wave of industry evolution.

How can a consulting engagement help you adopt new ideas?

Companies hoping to refresh their design philosophy and integrate new trends can find assistance by working with outside consultants and industry experts. This approach is a way to work new ideas into the design process while ensuring the ideas involved are solid, rather than momentary industry fixations.

For example, Transcenda's teams are well-versed in cutting-edge design philosophies that have been vetted and proven their value. There is a balance to be struck between new ideas and established best practices, and the expert consultants and hands-on team members at Transcenda understand where that line is located.

Transcenda can help determine relevant places to integrate new concepts into product designs. This collaborative approach delivers results that can please users while targeting business objectives, driving real value through savvy design. Contact us to learn more.