UX Emerging Trend 2021: Mobile First Design will be the way forward

While reading up on emerging trends in UX Design for 2021, I came across an article discussing how mobile first design will be the way forward. The article states that “Today, more than half of all searches are performed on a mobile device, and nearly 95% of those mobile searches happen with Google” (https://www.workshopper.com/post/ux-trends). The article went on to explain how “Google is taking strides in meeting the demand of mobile searches” and “as Google is the powerhouse for search, following the shifting demands they’re facing is one of the smartest things a UX designer can do” (https://www.workshopper.com/post/ux-trends).

After finishing the article I considered what this meant for UX designers as a whole, and how our jobs will be impacted by this emerging trend. While it is true that people today are becoming more and more attached to their mobile devices, does that mean that we would rather look at our small screens for website information than use a much larger desktop or laptop? How will designs be affected moving forward if we are focusing on the mobile layout? What does this mean for UX Designers today, and how will UX methods in 2021 differ from what we have been learning and training for?

While I obviously don’t have the answers to these questions, I am eager to see how the industry will take on these changes. In my own experience building my personal website, my main focus was on how the website will be viewed on a desktop rather than the mobile layout. I spent countless hours perfecting the version I thought mattered most, since I assumed most people viewing my website would do so from a desktop or laptop. When it finally occurred to me to check out my website’s mobile layout, I was appalled at how it transferred over to the phone and embarrassed that I had not corrected it earlier.

The conversion to mobile layout required a complete restructure of the website and became another long project. I was comforted by the fact that the desktop version was composed nicely until I began to realize through networking and sharing my website that most people were viewing it on their mobile devices, not desktops. This, while surprising to me, further proved what the article above is indicating. This emerging trend will have an effect on UX designers everywhere, and I am anxious to see how the industry will handle this change to make it easier on the user as well as the designer.