Change by Ross Findon on Unsplash

The past, present and future of design are really interesting for me. The relationships between the needs and the methods of production at the time are fascinating. In addition, the progression of design from visuals to something much more important is very intriguing, because the design of today and the future is so different from the design of the past.

Today, I'm going to tell you about what excites me about the future of design.
Disclaimer: This post is presented as my opinion and does not have a scientific backing.

Speed boost, new methods & tools

The speed at which new ideas can be implemented in design has sped up so much in recent years. For example, in UI/UX design, new prototyping tools such as Framer and soon InVision Studio have become available. These tools have sped up the process of testing out new designs by an immense amount, leading to new and innovative designs thanks to the greater freedom of experimentation. I'm eager to see what new and innovative ideas people come up with and put into practice, having been born from the rapid experimentation phase.

But we should not forget about the trusty old tools that have been there. We don't always need completely new tools if the old ones can be improved upon. Adobe has improved its suite of tools in recent years, adding more features and fixing some performance problems.
Even though they have done a good job, Adobe is not the company that is a prime example in the product improvement category. That title belongs to Serif, the company that released Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and is working on Affinity Publisher (a teaser for which was recently released). The software works very well and has by now been released on both macOS and Windows, which has been rare in recent years.
Serif's achievements in delivering wonderful software that works reliably and is extremely performant have been celebrated by Apple and (in my opinion) should be celebrated by us all. They are a serious competitor to Adobe, which is fantastic news since competition drives the industry forward to new heights.

Expansion into everyday life

Design has become an important part of many fields by now. As design has so many different branches and is not just limited to visuals, it's become growingly more important in our everyday life and our understanding of it has shaped the modern world.
We know how to direct attention more subtly, we have tools to test our theories and can design around the shortsightedness of humans. There are more and more in the news about how public spaces are being redesigned to repurpose them for specific uses. From sitting benches being replaced by leaning bars to blue lights being in bathrooms to prevent people from injecting drugs, design shapes the way we interact with the world in public spaces.

Increasing mainstream importance

As design is being talked about more in the media, people have become interested and are taking part of the discussion about design. Systems are being made with iteration in mind, not hoping to "get it right" the first time around. These advancements are also being brought into fields that have stagnated for decades, like education. While there is a long way to go before education is completely modernized, advancements are always welcome and they bring hope that education can and will be improved.

Although the design of systems is important, visuals are also more important than ever in the world of today. So many products are being advertised as "premium" and they need the design to match. These "premium" products have changed the expectations of the public, and so the industry has followed. I'd say that the world has moved towards form over function in many fields in the world of today. This has both pros and cons, but that's not the topic for today.

Conclusion

As I stated at the beginning of this post, I'm excited about the future of design. People are getting more involved in knowingly creating the spaces around them and designers can explain their decisionmaking better than ever before.

Advancements in technology and our understanding of our own brains is leading to a brighter future and I can't wait to see what it brings next.