1. Flat Design

This seems to be the most obvious choice for upcoming trends. Flat design is essentially the polar opposite of the realistic-riddled issue that many people have with skeumorphism. While they definitely weren’t the first to implement it, there’s one company that took it to an entirely new level. Microsoft.

Windows 8 seems to have built its entirely new OS around the idea of a completely flat UI, most of which revolves around the Windows 8 UI (previously known as Metro) and Live Tiles. It started a while ago with the XBOX dashboard, but seeing an entire OS revolve around the flat design was a bit unexpected at the time. It has its pros and cons, but thats the basics of trade-offs.


A more recent application that utilizes flat design is an alarm clock app that goes by the name, Rise. The entire UI is lacking any sort of three-dimensional elements with clean type prevailing throughout.. When you combine that with their gradients, you get a beautiful looking alarm clock. Granted, the utility of an alarm clock doesn’t need a lot of depth as far as the navigation and UX goes, it still proves it’s worth, making for a simple and visually appealing app.

Flat design isn’t for every application. However, there will without a doubt be an uprising of designers and developers alike who are going to strive for a very simplistic approach to the UI of apps to arrive and be updated in 2013.
culled from: http://theindustry.cc/2013/01/07/13-design-trends-for-2013/

you can read the other design trends... am too lazy to paste them all

Nice article. Although, i will always prefer the fewer buttons (more gestures) design. Which looks more like the Nairaland type Google wannabe UI...

Javanian: Nice article. Although, i will always prefer the fewer buttons (more gestures) design. Which looks more like the Nairaland type Google wannabe UI...

I prefer animation as affordance:
3. Animation as Affordance This is also placed strategically after the
previous trends. When you don’t have a button
to press or an icon to select, you can be lost as
to what needs to happen to achieve the task
you’re trying to accomplish. While there isn’t a
lot of this in applications right now (that I know of), little animations can be used to
guide the user as to what needs to happen to
achieve a certain task. The best example I have found yet is the
camera icon on the iOS lock screen. Many
people unfamiliar with iOS would more than
likely resort to just clicking on it instead of
dragging it up. Instead of not doing anything
when pressed, it does a little bounce up and down; revealing the camera feature
underneath. This gives a visual hint to
unknowing users as to how to properly use it in
the future. By offering this hint, users are able
to pick up on things rather quickly.

by offering little animations as affordance, you can guide
people around the UI without cluttering it with
buttons. It’s a solution to one of the trade-offs
of minimizing more prominent visual cues. Besides affordance, there’s another aspect of
animations and transitions that’s significant.
Subtlety and fluidity. Animations within
applications can make or break the experience
for users and when they feel natural, not
glitchy it makes that experience that much more valuable. With development getting
more and more precise and mobile processors
being able to handle much more, this should be
made a priority for upcoming designs.

Javanian: Nice article. Although, i will always prefer the fewer buttons (more gestures) design. Which looks more like the Google type Nairaland wannabe UI...

nairaland wannabe UI?... Lol
I didn't notice

Please edit your post, its the other way round. i meant Nairaland Google wannabe UI

Javanian: Please edit your post, its the other way round. i meant Nairaland Google wannabe UI

okay.. Now, I don't get.