How Important is it to keep up with Design Trends?

As the web and graphic design continue to evolve, the overall design itself has become more elegant. There exist usability standards and finest practices which help us to come up with up to date UX designs for mobiles as well as the websites. These practices are accompanied by cutting edge technologies, employed in web development process to make a design more functional. We make use of popular tools, follow certain principles to get most of out of our design ensuring quality and efficiency. However, more often we question ourselves whether we are doing it the correct way or not. This thought leads us falling behind on things such as the latest design trends.

But, is it worth following those trends? Let’s take a look.

Not All Design Trends Are Worthwhile

A trend is nothing but anything that is new and has gained popularity among the users. Over the past decades, there have been several hundreds and thousands of trends. However, not all such trends are useful.  

There are several questions you should ask while going behind a specific trend. For an example, the application of flat or material design totally depends on how users have been reacting to each one of these. What mobile platform uses one of those principles for designing UX? If Material Design is used, how many users are served by that OS platform and is that Operating System a popular choice among users?

Asking these questions to yourself, you can get an idea how you can get most out of those trends. However, before employing any such trend of design, you need to ask yourself some other questions:

• Verify whether such design trend causes any error?
• How likely is it to help the usability of the design?
• How many websites have been successful after using the trend?
• How likely is that trend is to fit with your current design?

Once you get answers to all these questions, you will develop a better feel for whether or not to go employ that trend in your own design. However, if you are working with your client, it would be convenient for you to evaluate the effectiveness of the trend based on the demos or previews presented to them.

Must Read,  Leading Mobile App Trends Followed By Companies In 2016

Apart from this, there are several other ways to ensure the effectiveness of a design trend.

• Stay Fresh And Original- Once you have made your mind make use of a particular trend, make sure it is not outdated. Follow its principles, but create your original design.
• Create Your Own Trend:- By creating new trends for websites or mobile app, I do not mean to work on an entirely different approach. However, having a thorough study of other trends and patterns, you can come up with your own idea of creating something new which is new and follows standards.

 

Conclusion

While following the design trends of graphic and mobile app design is not a bad idea, it is essential for every designer to inspect every good and bad associated with that trend. In spite of following popular trends, a number of websites have failed to accomplish the usability of the design, so instead of focusing more on the popular design components, it is a good idea to attain usability of the design by any possible means.