The pandemic has changed the world completely. People's behavior also changed and businesses have to follow the trend to survive. Besides that, the advantage of technology also creates new industry. All of these things start to become “new normals”. Let’s look at how these new normals influence the UI/UX industry.
1. The new age of AI and robot
In the emerging touchless economy, AI and robots will have very important roles. Since the robot is a machine, it doesn’t need to take a day off, and hence it will soon become a dominant part of the labor workforce. One day, you will get your product shipped by drones and have robots clean up and take care of everything for you. UX designers, therefore, need to learn how to design a robot and their interaction. This is a new opportunity for UX designers as robots will become a central part of the economy.
2. Buy everything online
To survive the pandemic, many companies need to be flexible and innovative. The industries which work wells in the pre-pandemic time such as car dealership now need to change their business model to survive. The innovative one will quickly realize the power of e-commerce and quickly change to that model. One best example is Carvana where users can buy cars online and get delivered at home quickly. Some other industries like real estate also develop new platforms for the buyers to view the house online such as virtual open houses. The increasing activity of moving everything online from all kinds of industries is a new challenge and also a new opportunity for UX/UI designers.
3. No touch behavior
Because of the pandemic, people are advised to limit contact with other people to stop the virus from spreading. This creates a new kind of behavior and economy. People use technology to perform all kinds of operations that used to require touching before such as digital wallets. Although these platforms have existed for a long time, there are still a lot of issues to make the experience work seamlessly. UX/UI designer's mission is not only to design a simple experience for users to limit contact with others but also to ensure that the technical team can develop that kind of experience. According to a survey in 2017 performed by Forrester Consulting have shown that only 16% of American consumers have used digital wallets before.
4. Remote world
Although working remotely become a new normal way of working and many companies start to have a completely remote workforce, this is actually the most challenging thing that employees are facing. Many people complain that it’s hard for them to balance between work and personal life. This is a great opportunity for designers to design effective tools to support remote work. Also, many people feel stress and burned out with remote work because they are sitting alone and have less interaction with other coworkers. Hence, designing software that helps online social interaction is also a new trend that designers need to pay attention to.
