Design trends 2026: what the research says and how to practise it

Trend 1

AI in a designer's daily work

Figma surveyed 906 designers for State of the Designer 2026: 89% say they work faster, and 91% say new AI tools improve their designs. The same report stresses that the designer's vision, not the tool, makes the difference. How to practise:

• •take one routine task (placeholder copy, icon variations, competitor analysis), do it with and without AI and compare the results;
• •keep the prompts that worked: that's your own library of techniques;
• •check every AI result: facts, accessibility, fit with the brand.

💡 More on tools in the guide AI tools for designers.

Trend 2

Trust in AI features as a design problem

In State of UX 2026, Nielsen Norman Group writes about “AI fatigue”: users are tired of features added for the sake of it, and trust in AI experiences is becoming a major design problem. According to NN/g, trust rests on transparency, control, consistency and support when the system fails. How to practise:

• •design an AI assistant for a familiar app and work out not only the happy path but also the “AI got it wrong”, “I don't know” and “undo” states;
• •show where the AI's answer came from and how a person can correct it.

Trend 3

Depth matters more than a pretty picture

Another NN/g point: UI still matters, but it's becoming less of a differentiator. Design systems and AI make interfaces cheaper to produce, so what's harder to automate is everything else: taste, research-informed understanding of context, critical thinking and careful judgement. How to practise:

• •start every study project by talking to three to five people, not with a mood board;
• •in your case study, write not “what I drew” but “what problem I solved and why this way”;
• •take apart other products: what decision was made here and what does it give the user?

Trend 4

Expressive visual systems: Liquid Glass and Material 3 Expressive

In June 2025 Apple introduced a new design for its platforms, including iOS 26, built around Liquid Glass: a translucent material that reflects and refracts its surroundings and adapts to content. Google released Material 3 Expressive: according to the team, the update is based on 46 studies with more than 18,000 participants, and it names colour, shape, size, motion and containment as the building blocks of expressive design. How to practise:

• •redraw one screen of a familiar app in the Liquid Glass style and check whether the text stays readable on different backgrounds;
• •make two versions of the same button or card, a restrained one and an expressive one, and show them to people: what do they notice first?

💡 Translucency and bold shapes can easily hurt readability. Check text contrast in every state.

Trend 5

Craft and creative freedom

According to Figma, designers who connect craft with emotion and polished experiences tend to be happier at work, and they rank creative freedom as the number one factor in job satisfaction. At the same time, 91% say they do their best work with clear goals. How to practise: take tasks with a clear brief and a deadline but leave room for your own decisions; that's exactly how design games work. Where to find ideas for such tasks:

• •real products you use every day: the best source of redesign tasks;
• •Mobbin and similar libraries: real app screens for spotting patterns;
• •Dribbble and Behance for visual inspiration, keeping in mind that many shots are concepts without real constraints;
• •Figma Community: files and UI kits you can take apart from the inside;
• •official guidelines, Apple Human Interface Guidelines and Material Design, to understand the rules before you break them.