In 2023, people-centered innovation, sustainable design, experimental fonts, minimalism, and immersive animations will be big trends in product design. We’ll talk about all of these and more in more depth to give you ideas for your next design project.

Skeuomorphism was a big design trend last year. Skeuomorphic design is the process of making user interfaces look like things in the real world. Most often, we see this in the form of toggles, switches, and dials in user interfaces.

In 2022, designers also made things more personal by letting users change the colors, sounds, and layouts of their experiences. This is a feature of Google’s Material Design 3 with Dynamic Color.

13 Inspiring Product Design Trends for 2023

This year, there are so many interesting, unique, and fun graphic design trends that it was hard to choose just a few. Here are our top 13 product design trends for 2023.

1) Design based on codes

We are pleased to see more businesses using code-based design tools like trends-design hugger, and we consider ourselves to be staunch proponents of this approach. In 2023, when we finally release our Merge-MUI integration, trends-design hugger users may look forward to some very exciting changes.

Prototypes in trendsdesignhugger may are created with the help of MUI, a React UI toolkit that takes its cues from Material Design. Usability testing is enhanced, product drift is avoided, and design handoffs are simplified when you design using production-ready components.

2) The Third Material Design

Now in its third major iteration, Google’s Material Design UI framework has retained its status as the de facto standard for many types of product design. With this complete and flexible UI kit, designers can iterate and scale their products rapidly.

There are three new features in Material Design 3:

Brands like Dynamic Color, which allows customers to create their own color schemes by choosing their own wallpaper and other elements, are a prime illustration of the trend toward user agency in the realm of consumer goods.
Foldable mobile devices are on the horizon, and Google has provided user interface design patterns for these devices. These patterns cover things like postures, reachability, hinges, and screen dividers.
Using design tokens, designers may set up reusable CSS variables for things like color, font, measurement, and more.

3) Typography

When done poorly, typography may have a negative effect on usability but is essential for developing consistent UI design and satisfying consumers with novel experiences.

For example, Envato, a large digital asset supplier, has observed that “global corporations like Uber, Santander, and Badoo have shifted towards cleaner, friendlier corporate identities with typography that represents a more inclusive design.”

Designers will likely use readable, UX-friendly fonts with slight quirks and oddities to set themselves apart in 2023, in line with current trends in inclusive, accessible, and sustainable design.

4) Developments in Eco-Friendly Web Design

Sustainable web design and product development methods have been gaining steam since 2022 when designers and engineers started concerted attempts to adopt them.

Trends in sustainable web design include adopting green hosting services, minimalist content management systems, user experience (UX) workflow optimization, and the purchase of pre-owned or used hardware.

5) Rethinking Minimalism

It’s no wonder that designers are still drawn to basic, straightforward user interfaces in light of the growing concern for environmental impact. It’s not only that a product with a minimalist design looks better; the user experience is enhanced as well.

The psychology of user interface design, accessibility, and inclusive design all benefit greatly from minimalist user interfaces. A simplified layout with fewer elements and call-to-actions makes it simpler for people to understand and navigate.

In addition to improving end-to-end UX processes, minimalism improves design consistency and simplifies the process of constructing and growing a design system.

6) Blackout

The dark mode is not a new phenomenon, but it is one technique to lessen the harmful effects of blue light from electronic devices. Because it reduces eye strain and makes information easier to read, some individuals like dark mode.

Well-known UI frameworks like Material Design, iOS, MUI, and others all have their own dark mode options. One of 2023’s most popular design trends is user customization, and many digital items and websites have a dark mode button.

7) Microinteractions with Moving Graphics

Designers have been putting a lot of thought into developing new user interface elements, such as motion visuals and micro-interactions. These interactive animations are a great way to grab the attention of your audience while also giving them important information about the system.

Microinteractions are used as intentional diversions by designers to hide screen transitions and page loading, resulting in a more fluid user experience.

8) Mobile navigation that works well with a thumb

Websites and digital goods are optimized for thumb-friendly mobile UIs to adhere to 2023’s human-focused, inclusive concept. One-handed users, those always on the move, and people carrying a toddler are all potential beneficiaries of thumb-friendly designs.

A floating call to action button makes it possible for mobile users to take action without having to scroll the page. E-commerce conversion rates may be increased by making pages easier to navigate with one’s thumb.

Streamline, one of Shopify’s most widely-used mobile-first themes centers its primary navigation on a drop-down menu that appears in the footer. Designers prioritized making every page of Streamline thumb-friendly so that customers could shop and check out with ease using just one hand.

9) Designing for the Voice User Interface (VUI)

That’s true; virtual user interfaces like Alexa, Siri, Bixby, and Google Assistant are here to stay, and they’re one of the most fascinating developments in user experience design. Statista predicts that by 2024, there will be more voice assistant gadgets than people around the globe.

However, voice design still has some ways to go before it can be considered fully developed. Over the next year, I expect to see VUI undergo even more standardization and development.

Exciting developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are also being made in the VUI field, which may lead to more tailored user experiences, innovative new products, and less reliance on user interaction with screens as the market changes toward voice-first design.

10) Tendency Toward Ecosystem-Informed Design

Because of digital product ecosystems, consumers may easily move between apps and gadgets, boosting their efficiency and productivity. The most well-known instance of this is Google Workspace, which offers a wide variety of Google apps as well as third-party apps via its Marketplace.

The Virtual Reality User Experience and the Multiverse

In light of Facebook’s rebranding as Meta and subsequent change in emphasis to the Metaverse, we should expect to see a rise in the demand for virtual reality (VR) products like the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Google Cardboard.

11) These three VR user experiences are presently being developed by product designers:

When wearing a VR headset and accompanying equipment, the user is immersed in a wholly synthetic, simulated world.
Augmented reality (AR) is the superimposition of computer-generated imagery (CGI) onto a user’s actual view of the physical world.

What we call “mixed reality” (MR) is a combination of the actual world with computer-generated imagery.
The design approach for virtual reality user interfaces is similar, but the viewports and surroundings are far more intricate. Although it is impossible to pinpoint a precise trend in the rapidly evolving fields of virtual reality (VR) and the Metaverse, the next 18 months may witness an increase in the number of VR products with a focus on the workplace.

This post from trends-design hugger Planet, Designing User Experience for VR Applications, provides extra insight for those interested in virtual reality product design but who may be new to the field. The article “Human-Centered Design Principles for Virtual Reality” can be found on UXXR.

12) Glassmorphism, Aurora, and Holographic Neon Lights

In both the Apple Mac OS Big Sur and Microsoft Windows 11 user interfaces, semi-transparent items with colored blur backgrounds are now a standard feature.

Aurora: a few new UI elements and colorful blur backgrounds, like those seen in the document pages of Material Design 3.
This holographic style is characterized by the use of abstract forms, neon hues, and holographic patterns and textures.
These vibrant patterns are often used for hero headers or for obscuring the backdrop of overlays.

13) Eco-Friendly Cardboard

Brands that value sustainability and eco-friendliness have made the “cardboard effect” a common design choice. In order to get the desired “cardboard cutout” effect, designers often use large, strong san-serif fonts, earthy tones, circles, and rounded corners.

Push the limits of product design to new heights. trends-design hugger’s reshaping UX design processes and workflows using code-based design. trends-design hugger’s sophisticated tools allow product teams to generate high-fidelity prototypes that are near-perfect representations of their code-based final products.

Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik

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