Developer insight: What 2021 has in store for consumer experience

As we move into 2021, the importance of attaining, and then retaining, customers’ interest is of paramount importance. With further lockdown measures implemented and people once again confined to their homes, the emphasis has shifted to developers to ensure their products can gain traction in a crowded marketplace.

From improvements in UX and UI, the demotion of gamification and the significance of accessibility, the next year will go some way in shaping how consumers interact with products in the future.

Simplification of UX and UI

This year we will see an overall simplification to UX and UI design. The industry is realising that some products are becoming overcomplicated which interferes with the seamless user journey people are now expecting from a digital experience and can cause them to abandon it. Designers will have to review their priority list and essential feature sets that they have in their products to make them more useable, accessible and obvious for users to consume.

In the app space, design patterns are becoming more standardised. Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Android’s Material Design system, which offer application developers a set of recommendations to help improve the experience for the users, are increasingly becoming similar.

We do not want the app industry to become a dull space where every app looks the same so a challenge for designers and businesses going forward will be to innovate within that framework, without moving too far away from proven UI and UX features and patterns. The key will be simplification and making attractive and engaging interfaces that people will use, understand and most importantly, return to.

Gamification to take a back seat

The eternal buzzword in the industry – gamification. For me, it simply means having a task to achieve, a reward to claim, and an element of competition. If done right, gamification is a great tool to have as it increases player engagement levels and retention. Done badly however, it will have the opposite effect and you can end up losing customers as a result. This year, the focus for many operators will be about gaining customers, especially from retail to online, due to the challenges that the industry faced in 2020, such as the closure of land-based venues.

It is now more important than ever to create a digital presence for as many users as possible and, because of that, gamification will take a back seat. From a designer’s perspective, there are better and smarter ways to incorporate elements in the design process which will generate the same value and engagement levels as gamification tools for operators and users alike.

Accessibility elements will become the norm

Accessibility will become an integral part of the development process. A large proportion of people have different impairments or reading difficulties that could make it harder for them to access and use digital products. The strides that Apple has made in this area with their latest operating system are amazing. Smarter VoiceOver, voice control and the new back-tap are all available features.

Any app that is produced today should make use of this expanded toolset to ensure the offering is as inclusive as possible. We believe that Android will follow suit and put more effort into this area in 2021. Outside our industry, we have seen some very impressive examples such as the PlayStation 4 game The Last of Us Part II, which has been called the most accessible game ever, featuring more than 60 accessibility settings from control handling to visual personalisation. As the focus on accessibility increases, there will be a lot of operators wanting to include these features retrospectively which will be costly. Accessibility elements should be included early in the design and development process to avoid future headaches further down the factory lines.

Tom Atfield has served as the creative director at mkodo since July 2016, first joining the company in February 2011. Prior to this, the UI and UX specialist spent six years at ATS.