There’s good news and there’s bad news, and it depends on whether you are a designer or a company looking for a designer.  The reality is it’s becoming increasingly hard to find good designers, especially those with UX (User Experience) skills. The trend in 2012 continues that, in part because companies know they need to keep pace with user expectations that increase almost by the minute.

To create great interfaces responsive to the impatient user, companies need designers who have significant project experience, think through design deeply, can facilitate and lead design in the business, and can communicate design clearly to people who are not part of the design effort. There is a great need for effective UX leaders, who can provide product direction through user research, support product strategy, drive innovation, and use UX approaches to reduce the risk of product failure through innovative design.

While the general trend of “more” on the design front will continue for years to come, there are ten concrete trends we see as critical to effective user experience-centered design in 2012:

1. User interface importance

More attention will be paid to the user experience and interface in 2012. Visitors of sites are looking for ease of navigation and usability regardless of the device they use to surf with.

2. Going mobile

Of course, no top 5 list for web design going into 2012 would be complete without including mobile. Although I believe that there will be a continued emphasis on native apps, I think we will see the Responsive Design Pattern take off in 2012. Mobile “geo-awareness” technology will create dramatic paradigm shifts in how we shop, socialize, and how we are marketed to.

3. Typography

There is no replacement for a nicely developed header with the right font type, weight, shading, color and white space. Typography has become part of design, and this trend will continue into 2012. In fact, this is an art form and very difficult to master.

4. Fashion-forward color and design

Minimalist design has been very popular for the past couple of years. I can certainly appreciate a clean, crisp design with plenty of white space, but I think we will see the resurgence of color and texture in designs in 2012.

5. Related function panels

You’ve seen them already. Open your Facebook app and look at the button in the top left corner. Tapping the button or swiping the interface from left to right opens the menu: This background panel is always there, neatly integrated in iOS navigation panel. The iOS navigation panel? At the top of all iOS apps with many views is a bar that usually has two buttons on it. This bar is called the navigation bar in the iOS SDK and it’s intended to be used like this: the left side button steps you back in the app, just like the back button in your browser. The right side button steps you forward, showing the next step or function in the app.

Related function panels will become a trend because complex apps need menus, and no one wants to start the app in a menu. Instead, users prefer starting the app smack in the middle of activity with the option of accessing the menu by “stepping back”.

6. Self help and health goes electronic

Personal biometrics and digital enabled behavior analysis will increasingly let consumers discreetly track and manage their lives more effectively.

7. Gestural interfaces and augmented reality

New natural interfaces based on movement will allow more intuitive control of tech, increasing access to information and digital content.

8. Television redefined

Integration of Social Media and The Cult of Influence into the TV experience will transform it from a media consumption device to a content curating experience.

9. Do It Yourself takes on a whole new meaning

The “appification of everything”, open source tech and accessible manufacturing merge the tangible product and digital, online worlds.

10. Interactive/Intuitive Design

Flash has seen better days.  There was a time when everyone has some kind of annoying flash interface.  In 2012 you will still see flash used, but in a much more relaxed and professional way.  We have seen HTML5 and CSS3 hit the scene over the past year with a love / hate welcoming by designers and governing bodies of all things web. Whether or not you think they are ready for primetime, they are here to stay, and I think 2012 is going to be a banner year. In fact, I believe these fine technologies will prove they are more than just a Flash replacement. Still, flash has its virtues.  It is highly interactive, which makes it attractive for both designers and visitors.  Because web visitors are more enlightened than ever, designers will need to find ways to leverage flash to make sites more intuitive without being overly, well, flashy.

Conclusion

Some people still perceive usability as a testing-only activity that gets done at the end of a product development cycle. Unfortunately, with this mindset, usability gets marginalized and commoditized. To overcome this mindset, we need to make a greater effort to show the strategic elements of what user researchers do. Often, there are various different groups in a business who think they know the customers and own customer experience, but no one is endeavoring to bring everything the organization knows into focus, developing a deeper, shared understanding of customers, and presenting it somewhere the entire organization can benefit from it. How do we stop just selling to customers and start engaging them in real ways, so they won’t feel like they’re just a number to us?  By embracing these trends and placing design in the forefront of development, companies will enable commerce and grow profits.