As in previous years, the UX Innovation Practice at Strategy Analytics has made our predictions for the 10 trends that we expect to have an impact on the user experience in 2018:

1. When it comes to user-centered autonomous systems, things will get worse before they get better
2. Smartphone mirroring, streaming media, embedded navigation, and HMI design meet at a crossroads
3. Samsung’s hingeless foldable smartphone will continue to experience setbacks from manufacturing and durability issues. Foldable displays with hinges will not catch on with consumers as they do not provide a truly seamless experience
4. A smartphone will launch with a fingerprint scanner underneath the display
5. Wearables with integrated cellular connectivity will usher in a range of compelling use cases for smartwatches and beyond. They will no longer be limited by the constraints of physical hardware; streamed content will bypass the battery
6. Solutions with more compelling content, aimed at mainstream adopters (in the form of Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR) will reinvigorate the high-end VR market
7. Desktop robots will emerge as compelling end-user products - they will capitalize on the popularity of the Amazon Echo and prove compelling because of their personable behaviour
8. More advanced and compelling use cases / skills will be developed for in-home digital assistants driving user adoption
9. Conversational User Interfaces – including chat bots - will emerge strongly in 2018, providing a more engaging user experience
10. Disruptive solutions will emerge to aid discovery of content across all platforms, addressing the key user pain-point of video consumption

A complimentary copy of the full report, including our thoughts behind each trend, can be downloaded here - UX Innovation Practice: 10 Trends for Creating Compelling User Experiences in 2018.

- Paul Brown