Is Design The Ultimate Future of Frond-End Development?

Owing to the modern-looking, sleek and intuitive designs, front-end application development has gained immense attention in the past few years. It has become a vital aspect of every app development project. Front-end development is a combination of user interface, development, analytics and more to facilitate a seamless user experience that drives increased engagement among customers.

Not long ago, the front-end designers were considered a commodity. Their job seemed to be fairly easy and not many frameworks were available to build upon. The designers made use of a two-dimensional screen, where a designer would paint and the heavy lifting task of custom coding was levied on the back end developers. However, the times have changed and the designers now have several innovative tools and technologies such as CSS3, HTML5, etc. to produce responsive and interactive front end designs. The advent of these front end technologies has apparently, blurred the lines between design and development, fueling the demand for front-end developers who could implement clean, attractive designs.

Designers Are De(v)signersThe old-age, dull looking single page designs have now turned into interactive, truly responsive websites with the help of new front end technologies. This is because the front end developers wear a customer’s hat throughout the product development process. Though everyone plays an important role during the PDLC, thinking from a user’s perspective is a designer’s responsibility. The reason why a designer’s job is no more restricted to creating visual designs and handing them over to developers. They need to collaborate with developers to ensure their designs adhere to guidelines until the last pixel is perfected. This creates a bunch of new professionals that are proficient at designing as well as implementation.

Choice of Front-End ToolsThe advancement in cloud computing has simplified setting up basic infrastructure for web product development. It eases version control, responsive web design, and design collaboration. Programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript which were once confined to developers are now mandatory for designers to learn and be proficient at. These languages are a baseline for all the front end frameworks available in the market. However, there are abundant tools available for front end development including jQuery, Backbone.js, Grunt, NPM, StackEdit, Sass, Stylus among many others.

Future Front End Development TrendsThe applications that are most trending today may become a thing of past in the future. But that doesn’t hold designers or developers back from using their favorite services. Perhaps, it might mean that they interact with them in a whole new way. Nevertheless, it important to keep an eye on the future trends that can possibly transform the way users interact with the real and virtual environment.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Chatbots: AI is making applications smarter and conversations are leveling up from text to voice (natural language). Having an AI-based assistant manage your schedule and day-to-day tasks will become the new normal. In addition, the chatbots are also becoming more responsive. These technologies will help front end developers learn more through user data and provide a personalized app experience to users.
2. Augmented, Virtual & Mixed Reality:The next-gen devices like HoloLens and Google Glass have facilitated AR, VR, and MR based application development. The design guidelines and principles for these technologies are completely different from that of mobile devices. Augmented, virtual, and mixed reality is the next key areas of growth that will see tremendous innovation.
3. Data-Driven Approach: Businesses are increasingly adopting the data-driven approach. They are generating data from everything – CRM, ERP, user’s app usage and interaction, fitness trackers, critical electrical systems, etc. By data analysis and visualization they are able to understand customers better and take informed actions based on the massive amount of data.

These trends will reshape the way front end applications will be developed and interact with the back end systems. Companies that still do not leverage advanced front end tools or fall behind the trends are likely to miss out on the huge wins. If you have any questions or queries relating to front end development, please feel free to write to us using the comment section below.

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