#40 UX Trends for Webpages
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How does the future of websites will look like? This is the topic of today's podcast episode. Hello my friends and welcome back to the future of your ex podcast. The future where we explore everything around tech design. Basically anything you need to know to keep up to date with the design world.

My name is Patricia Reiners. I'm your host for this podcast and I want to talk about a very important topic which are web pages and how the future of web pages will look like. I want to share with you three trends that I am seeing at the moment that will be hopefully pretty interesting for you and keep you inspired when you are designing your next web experience.

So, if you've been browsing the web lately, you might have noticed that many websites are starting to look, I would say, pretty similar, right? They all have the same navigation structure, they have the same place where you can find the icon, the logo, where you have the search bar. So, the structure of a lot of web pages, a lot of landing pages look very, very similar.

And although that might be a little bit frustrating for designers who want to experiment, for the user it's actually not so bad because the easier it is to find what they're looking for, the more successful the user probably will be. So when we're thinking about an e-commerce website and the user pretty much finds what they're looking for, although Get Designed is not crazy experimental, it's super helpful because the user probably buys something.

And we all had the experience where we are, you know, where we are ending up on a web page and asking ourselves, how do we actually get to where we want to get? And even the search is not working. So those things can be a little bit frustrating. And there has been the trend of very basic web design pages. And I want to look a little bit into the future and have a look at how

websites are probably going to look like or develop in the next couple of years or in the next decade. And I want to share with you three trends that I'm already seeing evolving at the moment that you can just like have an eye on when it comes to your next web project. Are you ready? Okay, I would say let's get started with the first trend.

So the first trend are prompt-based interfaces. And I assume that all of you have tried these kind of prompt-based interfaces that can be ChatGPT or even Figma plugins, the wireframe plugin for example, where you enter something, where you describe what you want and then get a certain result.

And this is definitely one of the trends that I've seen to move forward. The prompt based interfaces. And you know, this will definitely also take a step further. So at the moment when we are on web pages, we don't have these

prompt-based interfaces or input fields. We have these only on certain AI products, but imagine that on Amazon, for example, or on an e-commerce bookshop where you enter something like, "Hi, I want a vegan recipe app with at least 30 recipes. They should be gluten-free in German and should be shipped tomorrow." Something like that.

and you don't really focus on the filters on the side. And that makes it really, really interesting, right? Because user can just input something and then use these kind of like, use the input to get the results based on the input.

And I think this is pretty interesting. Jacob Nielsen, you might know him from the Jacob Nielsen Foundation. He's one of the founders of the website where you find also like a lot of great resources. I can link it in the show notes.

He actually did a research study around that topic. It was about the usability of prompt-based interfaces. And he, I mean, it was not a big study, but he was watching like, or he did qualitative interviews and testing with five participants. So not too many.

and he had two major outcomes or learnings. I would say they are both not super surprising but still interesting to know. First is he calls it accordion editing and this really occurs when the user asks the AI to shrink or expand its output. So often back to back and repeatedly to accomplish a singular goal.

They are naming it accordion editing after the musical instrument. So when you think about church EPT, you ask like, oh, write me a blog post about the about AI for design, for example.

then you think it's a little bit too long so you say ah no make it shorter then it makes it shorter and then you say ah no i need a little bit longer please add a metaphor for each paragraph for example so what he's referring to is that users are um

some kind of like making it longer and shorter than the results. And that can also be something for a search bar for a web page where we have this input field like the prompt and the user sometimes wants something a bit longer, sometimes a little bit shorter. And this really changes in between the interaction. And the second learning that he had from the usability testing or from the qualitative testing

um was called apple picking and this really occurs when users reference one or multiple previous ai responses in the following prompt to achieve their desired outcome they named it apple picking as it requires a lot of scrolling and picking useful bits to combine into something new you probably all have experienced that when you when you have um

you know when you use stretchgpt for something you enter a prompt to get a certain result some parts of the result are great some not so much so you copy and paste it and say okay similar to that but i also need this and then at some point you scroll up again because you remember there was this one center that you want to include so there's like a lot of back and forth

So thinking how could this look like for the e-commerce website, for the bookshop, think about that the vegan recipe app was actually for a present that you wanted to give to your mother's birthday, for example, right?

And you want to kind of like create a little present basket. One would be like the vegan recipe app and the next one would be something else. So you some kind of like pick the different apples from the outcome to create this basket out of different apples.

presents, right? That could be like a vegan recipe app and maybe like a scented candle and a blanket and you create something, you know, like this present basket. You do the same when you create like a blog post, for example, right? With JGPT where you enter different kind of prompts and then the end you combine it to have this perfect, you know, perfect basket. In that case, it's like a blog post.

This is the first trend that I'm seeing.

Super little break for a little announcement. Some of you already know that I am working on an amazing course, the AI for Designer Masterclass, which will focus on how to use AI, AI tools, how to design with AI for designers. So in case that is interesting to you and you want to learn about AI, feel free to sign up to the waiting list so you get informed as soon as that goes live. It only will be live for a short time.

amount of time so you don't want to miss that. so sign up you will get notified and don't miss it. and now i would say let's get back to the topic.

The user doesn't really need to navigate the whole navigation structure and find certain parts in a menu but goes directly via the search. But it's not search anymore because it's prompt-based so you can enter basically anything that you want, all the things that also would be included in the filters.

This is definitely a big step forward also for users to find the content and makes it interesting for us as designers, because at the moment we are thinking so much in hierarchical structures, navigation structure, information architecture, where to place certain elements. And there it will just be reached by the user. Let's come to point number two, which is the role of the

interface, so the graphical user interface. Because what really doesn't work so well and we've always seen that with AI product is to only have input field where user can input a text prompt. The problem with that is, also research has shown that, that a lot of users can't really articulate what they want. So in the example that I mentioned earlier with the vegan recipe book, I knew exactly what I wanted. But sometimes I have really no idea what I want.

Maybe it's my mother's birthday and I want to send her something, but I don't really know what she wants. So I would just enter like present and wouldn't really find something helpful because I need to describe what I want to get the perfect result. Same with JTPT. So what we still need is the graphical user interface, something where you have

already some things to get the user inspired. In that case, you already see that on Amazon, so that's super surprising. Certain kind of parts or certain kind of presents or certain kind of items that are related to your search history are based on any kind of predictions that the website or that the AI in the background makes that could be helpful to you.

For example, if you enter like "presence", the AI already knows, okay, kind of like "presence" and then it presents you different kind of visuals where you could click. Or different kind of categories, for example, that you have on the graphical user interface can be like "wedding", "present", I don't know, "home warming party", "a dinner", whatsoever.

So we still need the graphical user interface, but a little bit different. I think it will change a little bit more into like motivations, into different desired outcomes, and it will be more minimalistic and much more goal and solution focused. And that will be doable because of AI. So based on your, you know, on your previous behavior and all the learnings,

the graphical user interface will be adaptable. So it will change and will be focused much more on what is actually what the user wants to achieve. End point number three, and I think this is also really interesting, and this is probably what a lot of people actually think about the future of websites, and that's storytelling and branding. In the past, I think it was around February or something like that, I recorded a podcast episode around storytelling.

And I talked about a few ways how to incorporate great storytelling into web pages. I shared some examples. If we do check out that podcast episode, I think it's like something in February, March or something like that. So check it out. The storytelling part will become very important because what people are actually craving are emotions, connections, you know, having the feeling of

having the feeling of something at least. So something that's really causing emotions and that's really, you know, kind of like connecting with the user at some point. More a story, more like a game that people could play but also be a part of something. Gets really aligned with the brand, with the story that also companies will tell.

It's a little bit more complicated but as soon as also like internet bandwidth gets better this is all possible. And I would say this of course can be combined with like the traditional approach of more or less like the two, the first two sections that I mentioned with like the prompt-based interface and the general GUI. But overall the storytelling part is a little bit different right. So

Also, like the goal is a little bit different. When the user has more time, when it is really ready to experience the brand, when the user wants to learn something, that's super helpful.

But imagine that for my goal where I need to just order something quickly for my mother's birthday. I'm already too late. I'm in a hurry. I'm stressed. I probably don't want to go onto a journey or an adventure where I am diving deep into different kind of presents and stories, right? I want to get it done fast.

But at another point of time, I might be really interested in learning more about the history of the rainforest and what I could actually do to preserve and to help it growing. What could I actually do to sustainability?

So all these things to educate people, to help people to understand something, it's super helpful to include this kind of storytelling approach. And this is what we are already seeing in a lot of web experiences and will be very important. And for that, all the skills with 3D, the good of prototyping and storytelling will be so important for the future.

So I will just summarize that real quick. The first thing that is definitely going to come are the prompt-based interfaces. So searches will change. The second point is the interface. Also interfaces will change. You will still have interface, but there will be more

minimal, more focused on the essential and that's because of AI and of the learning and user predictions. And number three are storytelling. So really telling stories, immersing the user into the brand story and helping to tell a story of a brand or of a desired outcome.

So my friends, I hope this was helpful. You got some insights. And yes, if you have any questions or want to share something, feel free to say hello on Instagram at ux.patricia or future at ux podcast on Instagram. And besides that, I also have a newsletter where I'm sharing weekly insights about design and user experience. And yes, feel free to say hello, sign up. And thank you so much.

Hear you in the future, my friends!