Web design, at all times, thrives to create fresh with imitation and innovation coming together.

Making it simple, we all tend to incorporate the latest trends in what we create, stick to them until it becomes ubiquitous, and then search for the next big thing in web design to imitate. As we are just into the first quarter of 2016, this is the right time to search for the new and explore the techniques, which will make waves for the rest of the year to. Let us discuss a few such things, which may thrive this year.

• Diversity

There is no set rules on how a website should look. You don’t have to stick to any mould to develop a personal or business website. There are people who want to make their websites exactly matching to the others of the same industry. However, there is always a value for something comes as fresh or something that has a ‘feel different’ appeal.

When it comes to diversity, many of these ‘feel different’ calls are only superficial. The universality of WordPress, usage of responsive frameworks, and the desire to go with the trend has restricted it largely to uniform designs. But, considering the urge for diversity in 2016, you can expect something in terms of theatrical presentations.

There may be unique ways tried out by the designers, not only the presentation of web pages, but also navigation. Say for example, the video controls show advancement to a semi-transparent overlay. Many unique layouts and grids on demand, animations with CSS3, availability of variety of new fonts etc. offers a greater possibility for diversity than ever before.

• Richer illustrations

Diversity can also be expected in year 2016 in terms of illustrations as we have started seeing things like handmade artworks. Stock photography and high-quality graphics had a greater role to play in the past; however, this year more websites rely on the hand drawn art to offer a more aesthetic visual appeal.

Hand-drawn websites surely have more warmth and originality, which cannot be matched with flat designs. The new-age web designers also add an extra element of distinction to their designs with contemporary illustrations. As context plays vital nowadays, creating the most artful situational context is the key to get a grip.

• Artificial intelligence

When and where the interaction happens is vital now than how or why. It can be over a phone, a PC, or through internet TV. It can be indoors, outdoors, or anywhere on the go. Unlike someone sitting in front of a personal computer to make an interaction happen, now there are variety of situational combinations in which a user interacts with a product.

Considering this fact, UI designers have a bigger responsibility to create the machine responses seamlessly to match to the ‘when and where’ situations. However, it is not possible for them to instantaneously assess the user’s context at real time. But, the sophisticated AI engines can do it well. Now, one major change we can expect for the rest of the year is an increased human reliance on AI services like Cortana, Siri, and GoButler etc.

As witnessed in 2015, mobile-first design is the apt approach for the designers to take in 2016 too as the volume of mobile internet surfers is expected to exceed that of the PC users this year.