Responsive Web Design: Future trends that are here to stay
Do we remember anything that has evolved faster than the web? Well, the small screens of Smartphones are currently in vogue; and going by the latest trend, web designing is quickly adapting to cater to the latest needs of the mobile users.
As mobile takes over the desktop, we all know that Responsive Web Design (RWD) has an important role to play in the future. The increasing affinity of the Smartphones and tablets is also due to the various advantages they provide. This is because the ‘mobile first’ policy is at the very core of responsive design. The methodology enables web designers to build a dynamic website that positions its content to fit the different screen sizes of various devices. Designers use the flexible grids or layouts with CSS media queries to build these websites, which makes them highly compatible with mobile devices of various sizes.
The innovative approach also saves the companies from the huge cost of developing and maintaining websites for various individual platforms. In addition, the SEO ranking of the websites could experience a huge shake up due to the major revamp in the algorithms of premiere search engines. The new algorithms are set to give precedence to the websites that optimize their content for mobile, and responsive web designing is the ideal approach to achieve it.
Yet, most organizations are stuck with a website that is not fully compatible to be viewed on a mobile. However, the trend is bound to change as many businesses decide to make their websites responsive. This brings us to the question of what’s next in responsive web design. As corporate-websites gear up to go responsive, it is indeed vital for businesses to know what aspects of the approach would work for them and what wouldn’t. Here are some of the forecast responsive web design trends that can help them clarify their expectations.
Rapid Prototyping Tools
These are the tools that can be used by all type of designers including UX, UI, and Web designers. They enable designers to create high fidelity prototypes of websites quickly and easily. The prototyping tools help the designers to measure the aesthetics and the usability of websites without having to perform any sort of coding in any form. Designers can create a website in the browser itself and can directly launch it from the tool. The simplicity and functionality of these tools allow the designers to know how the finished product would look in the end. The option to work from the browser lets them save precious hours and resources.
Rapid prototyping tools also save the designers from following the traditional cumbersome methods of creating static wireframes and mockups for each client. They can now use the tools to explain every subtle transition and animation, with much more accuracy and efficacy. This will help avoid not just the confusion but also the lengthy conversations on transition speeds, and improve the overall user experience.
Personalized Visuals
- When Illustrations are tailored to match the character of the brand, they can help the brand achieve its own individuality. This is what most brands strive for, and illustrations with unique style and personality can make it happen. With a distinctive set of images and iconography combined with delightful animated visuals, brands can create a unique appeal to their target audience. Designers working with responsive web designs are now intensively focusing on making the illustrations more vivid to the viewers.
- Typography is another exceptional visual medium that can help brands in evoking emotions, and set the tone. With sharper resolutions and user-friendly screens of RWD, brands can have a vivid effect on the viewers by further pushing the limits of typography.
- Usage of authentic Photography is set to become more fashionable. If brands want to instantly strike a connection with the audience, they would have to minimize the usage of stock photographs, which are now easily recognizable by the viewers. Authentic photographs that go hand-in-hand with the RWD will only help the brands to achieve more credibility. Going by the trend, only those visuals which are representative of what the brand stands for will make the cut.
Uncomplicated User Interface
The extensive use of pre-designed themes along with the responsive approach to web design has impacted the way websites look and function today. With many more UI and UX patterns emerging, the focus is to simplify the functionality as well as the look and feel of the sites. With a lot of similarity among them, it has simplified the way the users interact with the websites. The numbers of complex features unique to a site are also bound to reduce drastically, through which websites will be able to provide a holistic simplified approach to the UI, which will automatically improve the UX.
Videos and Animations
Picture may be able to paint a thousand words, but videos have shown that they can increase the effectiveness many folds. Videos, which are basically a string of moving images, can capture the attention of the users much more instantly. More importance is attached to how the videos to load on a website and videos are now being increasingly integrated into the intrinsic pattern of responsive web design.
In the wake of Responsive web design turning mainstream, these are some of the trends which brands can watch out for. By integrating them into their own websites, brands can reap rich dividends that a highly popular website can bring.
Key Takeaways
- The mobile-first approach goes hand-in-hand with the responsive web design methodology.
- Many organizations are making their websites responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Trends like simplified UI, videos, and catchy illustrations will become an intrinsic part of the responsive web designing approach.