Showcasing The Most Interesting Product Design Trends

Product design is a constantly-evolving field. New trends are emerging every year. Just look at all the biggest companies in the world, and you will see that they have completely transformed over the years. We have analyzed future Product Design trends with the help of our UI/UX designers, product designers, and researchers. We have talked about new trends that will take place in 2023. We operate uniquely, and that much is certain. What does this mean? We love new trends and always give them a shot, but we don't follow them blindly. We used this opportunity to talk about some evergreen hits in product design.‍

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Welcome to Product Design Reality Check - Requirements over Imagination

We love reflecting on previous work, achievements, and failures, so before we start talking about product design trends our team follows and will follow, let’s take a minute to reflect. We have seen fantastic product design teams fail, crashing the product into the ground. The reason behind the failure lies in being disconnected from reality. We know this sounds harsh and critical, but we will explain.

Designers are creative beings who frequently have their heads in the clouds. Their mind and focus are on the future, and when thinking about how the product works and looks, they think about perfect scenarios. But guess what? We don’t live in an ideal world, and things tend to go south quite often.

So how did these teams fail? They thought of the product in an ideal environment and searched for the perfect design solution without considering the product requirements. Once they finish the design, they send it straight into production, and things start failing. Sending an untested design solution to production is a recipe for failure. An untested design solution causes bugs and results in a loss of time, money, and energy. The team can either correct the existing solution or create a new one from scratch, and that quickly leads to complete burnout. We all know this is a pressing issue in our industry, but this is a way to expedite it.

There is a simple solution to this problem. Test your design before you send it to production! As we have mentioned before, we love doing things differently, so our focus is not just testing the completed design before sending it to the development team. Our design and development teams are in sync throughout the project. We just gave you the secret ingredient to our success. If your design and development teams are in sync, they can build a realistic timeline and create a design solution that supports the current software requirements and will support all of them in the future.

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Product Design Trends of 2023 we Fell in Love with

Without further ado, here is a list of trends worth trying out in the upcoming period. In 2023, product design will focus on human-centric advances, eco-friendly concepts, fresh typefaces, simplicity, and interactive visuals.

Typography

Poor typography can hurt usability, but is vital for creating consistent UI design and pleasing customers. In 2023, designers are likely to use legible, user-friendly typefaces with subtle peculiarities to differentiate themselves, adhering to prevailing inclinations in accessible, sustainable design.

Sustainability & design

Sustainable web and product design methods have been gaining popularity since last year. Designers and engineers began making concrete attempts to adopt these trends in 2022.

Sustainable web design involves green hosting, minimal CMSs (minimalist content management systems), UX, workflow optimization, and second-hand hardware.

Back to basics, the minimalism trend in design

Simple, straightforward user interfaces are becoming more attractive to designers. Minimalism shouldn't surprise given the rising concern for environmental impact. A product with a minimalist design looks better and provides a better user experience.

Minimalist user interfaces have significant positive effects on the psychology of user interface design, accessibility, and inclusive design. People can navigate and understand a simplified layout with fewer components and call-to-actions.

Minimalism enhances design consistency and makes building and expanding a design system easier. It enhances the end-to-end UX processes.

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Powerful Evergreen Design Trends that our Team Lives by

There is a whole list of new trends in the design department, but as mentioned already, we tend to create our trends. We don't follow innovations just because they are trending. We test and compare to our standard practices and make a decision. So here is our list of evergreen trends that help our team create incredible designs.

Stylescapes

Here at Tech387, we use stylescapes. If you are a designer, chances are you know what a stylescape is. In case you don't know or have not used a stylescape, here is a brief explanation. A Stylescape is a group of brand elements, such as colors, typography, photography, patterns, etc., that a designer combines to create a brand's visual language.

Why do we use stylescapes? We use stylescapes to provide our clients with a comprehensive snapshot of what the brand could look like as a whole. We usually present the stylescapes in a few different ways. The purpose is for the client to choose one of the possible collaboration directions based on their strategy.

Most of the time, the client won't have a clear vision of how the product should look. Stylescapes are the easiest way to find out in what direction your team should be working. They will help your team quickly identify the best creative direction for a project and get the best results. Stylescapes will elicit your client's emotional response to the brand's look and feel. 

To conclude - stylescapes will save you a lot of time and energy, and you will go above and beyond your client's expectations.

Workshops

Collaboration is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in the workplace. We all know that bringing teams together is beneficial, but getting around to collaborating can be challenging when deadlines loom, and you need to get things done. Differently-skilled individuals motivate productivity while working together, but sometimes it gets demanding to overcome the differences in ways of thinking. One example would be the pragmatic development engineer and creative product designer alongside a client. But if you manage to ace the collaboration, you will soon reap the benefits.

Through a series of group exercises aimed at reaching a particular result, product design workshops give your team a chance to unravel a problem together. Workshops are about completing tasks and are frequently used as turning points to initiate actions or make decisions.

Here is a small input on how we organize workshops at Tech387. We start by sharing a project overview, then set clear expectations and goals. We list the tangible outcomes and use improv games as a warm-up. Brainstorming and sharing ideas take the majority of our time at a workshop. One thing needs to be mentioned here! You must respect every participant and give them enough time to present their ideas and share their perspective. This is the main ingredient of a successful workshop. 

Every workshop ends with a draft document of the project. The team gets on board with the direction, and everyone has a clear vision of their tasks. Workshops work for us because they save a lot of time and energy. If you haven't tried it so far, we recommend you do, and in case you are unsure where to start, you can call us, and we will share more tips and tricks.

Feedback sessions

A while ago we decided that in the design team, the feedback will be given through Loom videos. You might be wondering why?! It simplifies the process and gives a better output. 

Loom feedback gave a boost to our communication with the development team. We take less of their time, and it is much easier to explain the project flows & diagrams from our perspective following the requirements they provide. 

Denis Berilo, our product design lead said that feedback via Loom videos was a breakthrough for his team.