Andy Budd from Clearleft talks 2010

We talk to Andy Budd, founding partner, MD and User Experience Director at Clearleft. Here gives us a few words on what he thinks is set to be big in the coming year.

Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the financial crisis, 2009 turned out to be Clearleft’s best year ever. Talking to a lot of friends at other companies, the pattern seems the same. While clients were cutting back on their online marketing spend, they were investing in improving the profitability of their sites through usability and conversion optimisation. They were also getting a lot more discriminating with their choice of agencies, looking for ones that could actually improve their bottom line rather than just produce pretty visuals. I think this trend in user focused, data driven design is going to continue into 2010 as more companies see that design isn’t just a necessary expense, but can actually be used as a strategic advantage. As such, I think 2010 is going to be the year in which User Experience finally hits the mainstream.

Mobile app development is obviously going to get even bigger in 2010 with lots of applications using the iPhones inbuilt GPS to provide location based, context aware services. Many of these applications will be tied to a web interface, bridging the gap between the mobile and static web. As such, I think we’re going to see more web agencies dip their toes into the mobile world.

More developers are going to start using HTML5 and CSS3 in their client work, allowing them to create experiences that better mimic the desktop. However, because of this I can see a return to applications that require the use of a specific browser or set of browsers to work as intended.