04Jan

Web Design Predictions for 2009

I've been thinking about what might lie ahead for web designers in 2009. Here are a few ~~educated guesses~~ predictions.

Hand drawn web sites

Hand drawn will continue to remain a popular web design style through much of 2009, but will start to die off later in the year as designers start to see it as being very '2008.'

Mobile web design

Mobile web use will still be a small percentage for most web sites. However, it will continue to grow and highly trafficked web sites will be expected to have an 'iPhone version.'

Web designers who wish to remain on the cutting edge will enable their sites for mobile use by creating streamlined versions for mobile devices, even those these devices will increasingly have fully functional web browsers.

Social media

In 2009 it won't be enough to simply create a web site for a client.

Web designers will need to implement a farther reaching strategy that includes the main social media web sites. For example, creating Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages for a customer or product.

They will also be required to set up ways to automatically distribute content to and from this network of sites as well.

JavaScript libraries

Thanks to the popularity and ease of use of JavaScript libraries such as JQuery and MooTools, more and more web sites will add interactive touches and effects for good and for ill.

Signs of over-saturation in the use of these techniques will start to show towards the end of the year with a backlash regarding their use arising from some designers.

However, they will continue to be hugely popular.

Online video

Site owners will increasingly want to engage their visitors with video which will be delivered via Flash.

Web designers will need to know how to create pages and channels on popular online video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.

They will also need to know how to deploy video on their own web sites, employing the sorts of social media features that users expect such as ratings, comments and sharing.

Interaction design

With more and more people using web apps and interactive widgets, designers who are expert (or even competent) at interaction or UI design will be highly in demand.

Indeed, as web sites in general become more interactive they will become much more difficult to design and build as the user experience becomes vastly more complex.

During the design process, web designers will need to be able to show not just how something looks, but how it works.

Posted on: January 4, 2009 | 26 Comments

26 Comments Posted

Some good predictions here. I already feel the hand drawn site style is a step above niche. Most small business, and nearly all medium sized business wouldn't be a good fit for a hand drawn site design unless they are in an edgy industry or something targeting youth culture etc... I feel the backlash against the plugins for javascript libraries will be minimal, it will follow a similiar pattern as flash.

1. Posted by Utah Web Development on January 05, 2009

nice prediction..
please share more articles in our social bookmarking site: indofeed.com.
Thank's

2. Posted by indofeed bookmarking on January 05, 2009

Yer I agree with Utah!

Also here in London we are already seeing a difference in the type of contracts recruiters are looking for geared more towards UI and Javascript.

-M

3. Posted by London based photographer on January 05, 2009

I am already noticing overuse of certain script "effects" in places that dont really benefit from it.

I also agree that hand-drawn styles can only really be applied to a small sector of art or youth related sites. (most business sites wouldnt be compatible)

Deploying Flash videos is something I have been looking at for a while and I have yet to come up with a nice solution. How can you easily let people upload videos through a CMS? Without building complex scripts to convert video formats into Flash. (essentially building a youtube app)

Currently I am still getting clients to upload videos to Google Video or YouTube and then just importing this to their website. At least this way it reduces server overheads too.

Any thoughts?

4. Posted by David Kindness on January 05, 2009

Definitely see where you're coming from. I think these are accurate predictions. My only thought is about video. Seems that attention spans get short when it comes to online video, including my own. I never watch them and most people click away after the first minute. But it is where experimental web development is heading.

5. Posted by Brandon Cox on January 05, 2009

Social media customization will def. be a huge portion of web design for 2009 and moving forward.

6. Posted by Local Web Design on January 05, 2009

Interesting. That's pretty much what we're finding- that our clients want a website, a video, interactive features, and community access.

I guess the question is this: will client budgets increase along with these increased expectations? I am hopeful.

7. Posted by Patrick on January 05, 2009

David — I'm not really sure what solutions to suggest without knowing more about your personal situation. Even though you may consider embedding YouTube videos a shortcut, plenty of sites do this in order to leverage their viral nature.

Brandon — now that more people are on high-bandwidth connections, video is becoming an increasingly appropriate tool for demos, tours, testimonials, and various forms of marketing.

Even though people may click away after watching for 30 seconds to a minute, the cost to produce video has now fallen to a level where it's still worth doing. Also, with the popularity of user-generated videos, people's expectations in terms of video quality is pretty low, which further reduces the cost to entry for web site owners.

Patrick — doubtful! However, if you're familiar with working on these external sites/platforms, then the cost to do so should be pretty low - much more so than if you had to develop a micro-site from scratch.

8. Posted by Christian Watson on January 06, 2009

Hi,

Nice post... Infact Mobile web design is going to be future and i think sometime in future internet and mobile must converge... Not sure if it will get momentum in 2009...

Anyways nice Stuff...

Regards,
Anand
http://www.cogzideltemplates.com

9. Posted by Anand Nataraj on January 06, 2009

Yep, while using YouTube is ok, you are still potentially losing traffic to them.
What I was talking about was how to keep people on your own website with the features youtube have, so comments, ratings etc.

So you would need to have the videos embedded in your own website. Ideally in a flash player.

While there are a lot of Flash players about, you need to be fairly techy minded to convert videos into Flash so they can play on these. As I dont think they can just play normal videos formats? (i may be wrong)

You could use quicktime or media player to play videos so non techy people can just upload the video using a CMS, but this isnt as nice.

So what i was wondering was, is there a CMS or method that allows non-technical people to upload their videos which will then play in a Flash video player on the website? Or a Flash video player that can play/embed normal video formats (avoiding the need to convert)

Hope that made sense,
Thanks
D.

10. Posted by David Kindness on January 07, 2009

Interesting post.

What about the future of web standards? All but Internet Explorer conform to W3C now and the beta of IE8, although said to be compliant, doesn't look very promising.

With greater amounts of work for the developer due to a higher demand on UI and 2.0 technology, will developers still attempt to reach a W3C standard website or drop this in favour of time spent on building with the continuing amount of technologies expected to be on a website.

11. Posted by Devon Web Design on January 08, 2009

David — we use FlowPLayer for videos. It's a great player and is very customizable.

Of course, you still have the problem of the initial video conversion to Flash. I'm not aware of any built-in CMS solutions, but there are a number of online media converters that your clients might use.

However, that's still a pretty manual solution.

12. Posted by Christian Watson on January 08, 2009

I think its worth saying the in 2009 the web 2.0 style is truly dead... or a better word assimilated. over all its been great for design as it created a lowest common denominator for good design.
www.webdesignwaterford.ie

13. Posted by robert on January 09, 2009

I want to dispute your iphone prediction.

I think the 2009 trend will be that people will realise that overpriced tech items that were special mainly because they were white (and break quickly) are really bad value. In the ongoing spirit and trend of bubbles bursting and downsizing. iphones will die and people will realise that the value [common sense] option is having a decent sized screen connected to the mobile phones 3G network.

14. Posted by The WebSite Program on January 13, 2009

I believe 2009 and much of 2010 will be the year(s) for online video/web video or video ads, take your pick of names. My bet is small to medium size business owners will want more than a nice looking web, they will come to see it as a sales channel, not just an information channel. Designers will have to study more the sales aspects of the clients business to be successful. Just my limited view.

15. Posted by brian on January 15, 2009

Great predictions, though most of these could have worked just as well in January 2008.

16. Posted by John on January 16, 2009

2009 is the year that:
- mobile web "doesnt" take off. People still think an iphone is too small for browsing the web. We all have to wait for fold out screens (theyr coming)
- somebody mentions web 3.0 and in informed web community let out a groan
- we designers start making lots more money off online advertising! if your not prepped to service your customers with adwords, newsletter and banner adds you going to miss the boat.
- outsourcing grows grows grows
- TV dies. No one attends the funeral
http://www.webdesignwicklow.ie/

17. Posted by joe derope on January 17, 2009

I think minimalism will be the main design trend for 2009. What do you think?

18. Posted by Martin Bavio on January 17, 2009

Hi,
This is nice Web Design Predictions for 2009.
You have described very well.
Good Post. Keep Writing...

19. Posted by Web Design Los Angeles on January 20, 2009

I think the most important aspect you've raised is mobile style sheets/websites coming into the fore in terms of importance and expectance. It's definitely something I'm pushing for at work and something I'll be introducing for my own site.

20. Posted by Evan Skuthorpe Web Design on January 20, 2009

nice post thanks..

21. Posted by joyoge designers' bookmark on January 21, 2009

Excellent predictions, we have been seeing a steady increase in the number of customers also asking for quotes for facebook and myspace designs to be included in the package. Not many ask for iphone or mobile versions but i do think we'll see a lot more of these by Jan 2010

22. Posted by aaron malloy on January 26, 2009

joe derope — re. people finding the iPhone to small to access the internet, which people would they be? Not anyone who actually has an iPhone, I can assure you.

In addition, people are not using mobile devices to 'browse the web.' They are using them to get things done — find the location of something; look up a movie showtime; fact check a piece of information; check what their friends are doing/saying on their favorite social networks; read the latest news.

So, while you are probably right in saying that mobile devices are not ideal for 'browsing the web,' they are great for 'using the web,' which I think is a much more relevant concept.

23. Posted by Christian Watson on January 27, 2009

I think this is the kind of thing on the agenda for the Web Directions conference in Denver, on Feb 2.

https://secure.webdirections.org/wdn09/aff/WDN09MC

I'm hoping to register!

24. Posted by Mike on January 28, 2009

In year 2009 mobile web design is going to be future and i think sometime in future internet and mobile must converge... Cos mobile is most important thing for everybody in future...

25. Posted by Seo Malaysia on February 05, 2009

nice predictions, we shall see if they are accurate...

26. Posted by rick on February 11, 2009