Must Design

Explore the top web designing trends for 2015. The infographic discusses the top 6 predictions that are set to rule the web designing world in 2015.

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/david-mccandless-the-beauty-of-data-visualization David McCandless turns complex data sets, like worldwide milita...

Marty's Take On Web Design & Data Visualization
Had an interesting conversation with Curagami ( http://www.Curagami.com ) co-founder Phil Buckley at lunch yesterday. We were discussing my attempt to change the CSS on the Hack Headphones Shopify store I'm creating. 

I shared how I found a post on how to change the buy button. I wanted a bigger button. The problem was the post with the answer must have been 2 or more iterations behind the theme I'm using.

The change moved slightly unintelligible java to completely unintelligible code (at least for me). Where once there was a "height" variable now there were nested variables.

Welcome to the future of web design.

If a company with more Ph.Ds than almost anyone, Google, decides to float their index creating a responsive float that seems to wrap search results around searchers like a blanket WHY don't we lucky few Internet marketers realize that's the planet we are all in transit to?

The New Web Designer
Once a "website" becomes a series of interlocking "IF" "THEN" statements "designing" a website becomes an exercise in data visualization.  

Design in a variable world is different as this great data visualization TED video shares (stay with it as the visual candy gets better in the middle).  The skills need to be this "new designer" include but are not limited to:

* Spatial reasoning and intelligence.

* Ability to read and translate metrics into meaningful images (i.e. data visualization).
* Enough Javascript to choke a horse.

* Even more CSS as everything is floating in a variable galaxy.
* Understanding how variables and results should influence design, color, layout in order to increase engagement and conversion.

If this sounds like the silos between design, code, marketing, research, sales and customer service are coming down fast we agree.  

What web design trends do you think we'll see in 2014? I'm betting on more simplicity, more cleanliness, and more focus on smaller screen sizes, among other things.

Marty Note

1. Flat UI - AGREE and general agreement.2. 'Mobile first' - AGREE! & trying to wrestle that pig to ground now with CrowdFunde.3. Yet more scrolling - Agree and coming from mobile too.

4. More HTML5 goodness - Agree.

5. More HTML5 badness - Yes goes hand-in-hand with #4

6. Micro UX - New to me, can't judge yet.

7. Less text - Agree we are moving to the visual web and lean content (more infographics, arresting images and graphics less text)

.8. Minimalist navigation - Agree and this is coming from MOBILE (working CrowdFunde's "mobile first" design right now and navigation is expensive in mobile.

9. CSS replaces images - Agree CSS Canvas is going to make many images needless weight on the page.

10. Video / moving backgrounds - AGREE!

11. Richer content experiences - Agree especially video.

12. Making the most of one page - Agree, but don't agree with single page sites (we aren't there yet).

13. Varied typography - Agree there is a lot happening on the server side with type.

14. Monochromatic design - New to me, but more likely than

15. Hypercolour - Not Sure color is easy to do BAD online and more color can make a mess.

16. Cards / tiles - Fascinating and new to me, read why cards are future of the web

http://insideintercom.io/why-cards-are-the-future-of-the-web/

17. Bigger, better imagery (Agree, cloud caching and CDNs making this possible).

18. Fixed position content / navigation - Agree as social widgets already doing this

What do we predict will be the web design trends in 2014? Here is an infographic with our predictions

Marty Note
Here are my thoughts on web design in 2014.

1. Code Free = Disagree, not in 2014, I have tried Webydo and it is as hard to master as code so why bother, until there is a tool that is EASIER than code we will continue to code.

2. More CMS based site - Agree and this is another way of saying more blogs acting like websites. Good idea to read my Websites vs. Blog post on Curatti.com earlier in the week to know how to keep the things that matter from a "website" as your blog fills both shoes: Websites vs. Blogs Which One Is Better and Why http://curatti.com/websites-vs-blogs/ .

3. Single Page Sites - Disagree - I GUESS you could have a robust enough social presence that a single page site would be fine, but you give up a lot and you are asking a single page to accomplish a lot. Google doesn't rank websites they rank web pages, so pagespread (# of pages in Google) can help build traffic via SEO (that is left of it anyway).

A single page website is only viable for strong mobile or social players and somewhere there has to be an engine generating NEW out into the world. If you use a single page, push NEW out and then wipe it clean that is simply CRAZY with the way traffic is parsed and how we gain authority today. Oprah could have a single page site, how an average website could achieve all that is needed with a single page is beyond me.

4. Interactive Infographics - Agree with this one. The Infographic has legs, or should say the idea of visualizing content has legs. The infographic is an expression of a larger movement - our desire to understand things FAST.

Other 2014 Web Design Trends I see include:

* Lean Design - This movement plays off of #4 and the strength of the marketing visualization movement. Creating more understanding faster is a trending trend.

* Social Net Tapestry - Website designs MUST be social and agnostic about social nets. Including Facebook, Twitter, GPlus, YouTube, Scoop.it, StumbleUpon and 10 more I can't think of right now in ways that make sharing easy, rewarding and not overwhelming is a trend no one has figured out all that well yet, but we will begin to see novel ideas that build on the social media  "widget" idea in 2014 (only much better let's hope).

* Content Curation - we must build websites in 2014 that are focused on KEY CONVERSATIONS and become agnostic about where those conversations happen. Own the conversation, own the traffic.

Curating content INTO a website (or blog) is an important trend no one has quite figured out yet either. Start with traditional ORM (Online Reputation Management) tools. Use ORM to crack some APIs so when something relevant happens to your company, brands or products out there in social media's north forty you

1. Know about it.
2. Filter it into your content by having ways (filters) to attach curated content into existing themes. 
3. Gamify contributors so reward is generous, immediate and competitive.

* Appification of Everything - the Mobile Revolution is not about the phone. It is about redesigning our THINKING about how information creates interaction, engagement and conversion (so a small thing lol). Thinking of everything we do online as an app we will be improving is a very "Mobile First" way to think. Those who understand the "Appification" of everything will win BIG as the rest of the world catches up in 2014.

* Gamification - If your website design doesn't find ways to profile, reward and share (curate) content from contributors you will fall hopelessly behind in 2014. The social web is here, despite few understanding the breadth of that that means, and websites need to promote an ever increasing amount of User Generated Content (UGC). Best way to do that is by using game theory to create web design.