User Interface Design/Drashti Talajiya/
20 Nov, 2024
Table of contents
Quick summary: Do you want to create a mobile app for your business? You must be looking for an appealing design that resonates with current design trends and user experience. Designing and interface for mobile applications. Help showcase your product and business information and connect/engage users with your app. But how will you ensure the design you create for your mobile app is effective? Mobile app design trends — yes, that's the answer. And we have explained the top design trends that designers now implement in their projects in coming years. Let's explore.
Did you know the total revenue generated from the mobile app market was $421 billion in 2022? The same was expected to reach $674 billion by 2027.
Mobile app design trends are vital to delivering a greater user experience. With users spending almost 16 billion hours using apps, the mobile app market is thriving with a 46% increase in the number of hours users spend on the app. These stats are crucial to understanding the role of UI/UX design for mobile apps and the increasing demand for intuitive and engaging user experience. This has given designers and design agencies tough challenges in meeting user expectations. Understanding design trends for Mobile applications will help craft appealing UI/UX designs for apps, ensuring success of the digital products by keeping users engaged and satisfied. With trends, you know what your users want, design UI/UX for mobile that solves their problems and entices them to come back.
In short, keeping an eye on Top design trends for Mobile applications will matter the most. We have refined and refined the top UI UX design trends for Mobile apps to watch in 2025. Let's explore.
latest Mobile App Design Trends to Embrace in 2025
Even though UI/UX design trends are similar to web and mobile, there are some trends that can be effectively useful for mobile. In contrast, others can be useful for comprehensive design purposes. We have explored the top 10 trends from the many to help you stick with the most relevant ones instead of overwhelming you with a bunch of trends. Here are the top trends which we shall discuss in this article.
Minimalistic and Simplified UI Design
Personalized User Experiences
Dark Mode and Adaptive Themes
Voice User Interface (VUI) Integration
3D Graphics and Animations
Microinteractions for User Engagement
Neomorphism (Soft UI)
Biometric Authentication
Augmented Reality (AR) Integration
Gesture-Based Navigation
Minimalistic and Simplified UI Design
UI for mobile apps is the first impression that makes or breaks your effort to connect with users and keep them engaged with your apps. Minimalistic and simplified UI design can save you from this challenge. Minimalist, especially simplified UI design, is a new trend gaining a lot of momentum in the design sector. It gives users clean and uncluttered interfaces by removing unnecessary elements and distractions. With these new design trends, designers prioritize and highlight the most essential information that directly attracts and engages users.
Benefits
Easy navigation
Faster loading times
Better focus on essential content
Less complexity in design elements resulting in lower maintenance
Improved user experience as there is no clutter and distraction
Examples
One of the best examples of minimalist design is Apple's website, which focuses on minimal text and maximum visualization. Google search engine is another such example that gives a single search bar for users to search Query and get results.
Tip: make better use of white space, focus on essential content first, maintain color pallets and typography across the app, and ensure the information hierarchy is clear.
Personalized User Experiences
Personalized user experience, as its name suggests, is a practice of designing a distant product that caters to the specific needs and preferences of users. Basically, before creating a design for a digital product, design agencies conduct market research and collect a lot of data about users, markets, and user behaviors. They study the data and create content, features, and interactions based on that.
Benefits
Improved customer experience
Fulfilled customer's interests and needs
Achieve higher customer loyalty
Ensure better customer retention
Higher engagement and competitive advantages
Examples
An e-commerce app like Amazon, BestBuy, Flipkart, and others, displays product recommendations based on users' past purchases and surfing history.
Tip: good research will help you create outstanding personalized user experiences. Hence, before you begin designing UX, ensure you have enough data to analyze and understand the needs, demands, challenges, and behavior of users.
Dark Mode and Adaptive Themes
Darm mode with an adaptive theme has been a crucial design trend for many years. It is an interface setting that enables the device to switch to a darker palette/dark mode. In this mode, users can experience text on a dark background, which typically reduces eye strain in dark or low-light environments. This is important for users using devices at night. "Adaptive Theme" is a feature that enables the device to adjust color automatically according to the environment. Users have manual options for setting out options as well.
Benefits
Enables users to save battery backup
Reduces eye strain in low light and condition
Provide contrasting visuals with latex and dark backgrounds for better readability.
With dark mode, the main focus is on Content.
Examples
Most iOS and Android devices have a dark mode option. For example, X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, Spotify, and most pre-installed system applications provide a dark mode facility.
Tip: If possible, use desaturated colors while avoiding pure black and white so that you can prioritize text contrast. You may also consider visual hierarchy and accessibility standards.
Voice User Interface (VUI) Integration
Voice user interface (VUI) integration enables your users to have control and interact with your mobile app using spoken commands. Basically, your design team Crafts a voice-place interaction system that enables users to use their voice instead of a keyboard so touchscreen to type commands. It is crucial for hands-free operation. VUI integration is a trending feature that is available in most smartphone applications.
Benefits
Hands-free operations/interaction
Ensure better accessibility for users
Even persons with disabilities can easily access your application
Provide higher efficiency
Ensure natural interaction
Deliver personalized capabilities
Simplify complex process
Examples
Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, smart home speakers, operating systems, and various other applications in smart home systems and car navigation systems are some of the examples that Help users schedule, set Reminders, control smart homes, make requests, and give commands.
Tip: focus on research so you understand the actual challenges, needs, and requirements of users. With data, you can implement better feedback mechanisms and design applications for better error handling violence consistency across interactions.
3D Graphics and Animations
Nowadays, 3-D graphics are very much in trend. With 3-D graphics and animations, designers can help you build applications that animate life-like objects, characters, and environments. These are the elements that give better interaction and let users interact with your product by making it visually engaging content.
Benefits
Providing immersive and realistic visual experience
Better focus on product visualization
Simplify and communicate complex concepts easily
Good absence for product demonstration and products needed for a better and clearer visual explanation
Examples
Nike's Air Max 270 is the best example of a product that allows users to effectively interact with the product using a 3-D model of the shoes. Video games like. "The Legend of Zelda" and movies like Avatar are some of the best examples of 3D graphics.
Tip: Utilize reading for smooth character, conduct thorough storyboarding and give more focus on realistic references.
Microinteractions for User Engagement
When you create a design for a Mobile application, you can use various small and subtle visual cues, such as button animations, progress bars, interactive tooltips, and others, which can effectively provide feedback to users based on actions they perform on your app. It is used to provide a better and enhanced user experience. However, your product must deliver a more intuitive, engaging, and efficient design.
Benefits
Provide instant feedback and results to user action
Make your design responsive, engaging, and satisfy your customers
Make better accessibility to your product
Users can easily find information and complete task
You can make your app feel responsive and lively
Examples
On clicking the lights button, it animates and changes its color Auto-complete options that show on display when you just complete any task Progress bar for downloading and uploading files, videos, and audio
Tip: Keep it simple, accessible, and shareable so your users can experience and have fun using your application.
Neumorphism (Soft UI)
It's a new design trend that combines two design elements, like minimalism and skeuomorphism, to create more appeal while giving your UI elements a fresh look. With a combination of UI/UX design, service providers create a soft 3D look using subtle shadows, highlights, and muted colors to mimic real-world material.
Benefits
Provides fresh aesthetic and visually appealing design with soft shadows and highlights
Create a design that is more interactive and tactile using variations like subtle gradients and shadow
With Neumorphism, users can find it familiar due to 3-D like appearance
You get the flexibility to customize design to fit your branding standards and style
Examples
music player app with elevated buttons, add with soft looking buttons/Cards/CTA, different dashboards with subtle shadows, fitness tracker app interface with elevated activities stats, and many others are examples of neomorphism.
Tip: make the best use of the color palette, saddle, and highlight to bring variation and create death.
Biometric Authentication
Most small, medium, and large Enterprises use biometric tech technologies for various purposes. With easy access and accessibility, the use of this technology is increasing rapidly. Apart from this, biometric technology is also effectively used to recognize heart rate and vein patterns. With the latest trains, companies are looking to accommodate users with disabilities and prioritizing excellent user experience with accessible and intuitive design features. Designers implement various authentication methods, including multi-factor authentication, dark mode, and high contrast with behavioral biometrics.
Benefits
High security with fingerprints and facial features
Provide comfort and convenience to users, eliminating the need for remembering complex passwords and enabling faster and smoother login
Examples
Most media and enterprise companies, including banking and financial institutions, IT companies, and healthcare, use apps that use biometric authentication. While IT companies and other institutions use apps for login and logout or employee attendance purposes, banking and financial apps are used for secure biometric authentication.
Tip: Make sure the biometric interface is easy to use, store data, and collect organized information.
Augmented Reality (AR) Integration
Augmented reality is a new normal nowadays. Most e-commerce companies and gaming providers use applications that provide an immersive user experience. Basically, augmented reality allows businesses to deliver inactive experiences simply by overlining information into the real world. AR uses AI-powered object recognition and other features to empower devices through mobile apps and smart glasses to identify and track real-world objects.
Benefits
Improved collaboration with real-time sharing across geographics
More efficient content updates to make product exclusive and potential
Improve product development with earliest-stage amendments
Better visualization of distal product
Examples
Amazon provides an AR feature for iPhone users, allowing them a "view in your room" feature. Similarly, retail, real estate, education, manufacturing, and others can integrate augmented reality features into the design for a better user experience.
Gesture-Based Navigation
Double tap on the back of the iPhone can capture screenshots and two-finger slides on an Android device and play/pause music or perform any task you have set the gesture for. Similarly, swipe up can take you home, and swiping from left to right can let you switch apps. Gesture-based navigation is crucial for mobile apps to help users interact with the app more efficiently.
Benefits
Intuitive interaction by naturally aligning with human movements
Provides space efficiency by minimizing the need for on-screen buttons
Deliver an excellent user experience
Enable faster navigation
Supports accessibility as users can use input methods for accessing features
Examples
The train started with the most popular dating apps like Tinder, with zooming in and out, swiping right to like, and swiping left to reject. Android smartphone users have various gesture-based navigation features, such as swiping up to go home and multiple others.
Tip: While designing gesture navigation for mobile apps, the designer must prioritize consistency with familiar gestures. Do not overwhelm users with various gesture-based navigation.
Final thoughts
With UI/UX design trends for mobile apps, it is crucial for a design agency to stay updated with the latest trends and happenings in the design sector. More than that, knowing trends will help you implement your own creatives and think differently. Explore these trends as they are the most exclusive and help deliver something new, fresh, and creative to your clients. In case you are exploring trends for your business mobile apps, these trends will help you better negotiate with your UI/UX design partner. We are TheFinch Design, a leading design service provider with over a decade of experience in the design sector. Connect with us if you want to get a detailed explanation of any trend or want to design a trendy mobile app. We are here to help.
Would you like to Listen?
Share this blog
Got the vision? We’ve got the expertise. Let’s create together.