There has never been a better time than the present for the UI/UX designers. The current digital and technological age has ushered in the wave of augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed or hybrid reality and artificial intelligence. These areas have opened up a variety of new design opportunities for designers, who are always striving to make user interface and experience as unique as possible. AI, VR, AR and MR are now equipping the designers with tools and means necessary to take their creativity to next level and design better and more impressive quality products. It's time to start embracing these tech trends and think outside the box.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Machines can be taught to think, reason, learn from experience and make critical decisions, and artificial intelligence is an evident proof that this is indeed possible. Simplifying the problem of cognitive overload for humans, AI driven computers or other computer-controlled devices help us in simple to complicated applications of our daily life. Google Assistant and Siri, the famous virtual assistants, are good examples of how AI has effortlessly found its way into our day-to-day lifestyle.
What is Augmented Reality?
AR is an approach to making the real-time environment around you much more interesting by integrating some digital information to the environment's elements. What you see with AR is not completely artificial, it's only reality with certain virtual enhancements. Simply put, AR integrates virtual features to the physical environment around you.
What is Virtual Reality?
Unlike augmented reality, VR is about creating a completely artificial environment through computer-generated simulation. This artificial world created by VR can primarily simulate the real-world senses of vision and sound. VR completely absorbs the user into a simulated and interactive environment.
What is Mixed Reality?
Taking the technologies of AR and VR one step ahead, Mixed reality or Hybrid reality merges the real and virtual worlds together using immersive technology and creates an environment where there can be interactions between the elements of the real physical world and the artificial virtual world. MR is a mixture of AR and VR.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on UI/UX Design
Product and service designers can use AI to leverage the plethora of data information they have at their disposal and let this drive their creative design strategies. With AI, designers can enable devices to make data-based decisions paving the way for more automation that benefits the device users. Dynamic user interfaces and personalized user experiences are examples of how AI, when integrated with UI and UX design, can uplift the way users interact with products.
Talking to Siri on your iPhone and asking it to set an alarm or to tell you about the current weather are examples of how the UI uses human voice as opposed to the traditional manual clicks here and there for getting driven into action.
How Does Augmented Reality Affect UI/UX Design?
Just how AI uses data for making smarter decisions, AR too uses the recognition data of certain objects and points in the environment. Apps built using AR are capable of recognizing the images, colors and objects of the surrounding environment. This is necessary in order for the app to identify the details of the physical world that need augmentation.
AR design solutions need to be kept as natural as possible and this can be done by designers by paying attention to the needs of the design's target users. What you, as a designer, need to give your users is an experience of virtual world painted right across their own real world.
The Role of Virtual Reality in UI/UX Design
With VR, designers have a potent tool using which they have the ability to completely engage their users in a virtually created world and transport them to new dimensions. But you do have to take care that the artificial reality experience that you're creating is convincing, immersive and interactive.
There is a lot to this power of simulated reality. It has even found its use in medicine, where patients are given headsets during critical surgeries in order to help them calm down by showing them beautiful and tranquil beach destinations via the VR headsets.
How Mixed Reality and UI/UX Design Fit Together?
MR technology gives designers a lot of room to venture into new design explorations. The user experience can now actually be a smart blend of physical environment and virtual elements. However, in order to do this perfectly the designers have to acquire a thorough real-world understanding, meaning that they need to visualize the typical physical space surrounding the user and then build on the elements that they've perused. This is so because at no point you want your users to feel uncomfortable and feel like the newly introduced elements are invading their personal space.
What is CIS Up To in These Exciting Technology Areas?
Since the past few years, we have been extensively working on 2D and 3D gaming application development using popular game development engines like Unity, Cocos 2D, Cocos 3D, SpriteKit, etc. for multiple categories like Racing, Adventure, Strategy, Action, Puzzle and Logical.
We have been developing Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) based mobile applications and games that offer users with real-like and interactive experiences. Our VR based apps have been running and playing successfully on various popular VR devices like Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, Samsung Gear VR, the HTC Vive, Google Cardboard, etc.
For example, for one of our real estate industry clients we developed a virtual reality based mobile app, using which real estate agents can give their customers a proper 3D view of a property and its amenities. Using this application, a user will feel like he is actually visiting that property and will thus get a complete idea of that place without going there physically.
About Cyber Infrastructure (CIS)
Cyber Infrastructure, or CIS, is the biggest Information Technology company in Central India with a team of 650+ technology experts and worldwide presence in locations of USA, UK, Singapore, South Africa and India (our headquarters). We are a CMMI Level 3 and ISO 9001:2015 certified IT company, dedicated to providing highly optimized technology solutions and services to businesses across the globe.
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