2026 UI/UX Design Trends - 2 of the Biggest Trends

I'm going to talk about two huge trends that are coming up here in 2026 that are I think are just going to be absolutely massive. Um the first one is the biggest one and I'll start with that and that's the fact that if you are UIUX designer you are living in the dark ages if you're not also working in AI based idees similar to cursor. Here's why I say that. What it meant to be a UIUX designer, you know, before AI, you know, had really kicked off in the last couple

years was it meant that you lived within tools like Figma, you design layouts and UIs, they were [music] responsive, and then you handed those off to a developer, a front-end developer, someone who could take that design, make it a working reality in HTML, CSS, perhaps JavaScript, and other technologies, and you just stayed in your little design box. Now with tools like cursor and these various AI builders and these platforms that we have, it's no longer sufficient in my

opinion to just be a UIUX designer who lives in Figma. I think if you really want to expand your capabilities and also your value as somebody you know who perhaps is a freelancer and also just from somebody who's excited about building stuff and seeing it come alive, you need to adopt that full stack process, that mentality and hop into tools like cursor to see your designs that you've [music] built come alive. In the past, if you were to do this, you would be kind of like a full stack

developer because it required not just understanding design, but it also required understanding HTML, CSS, JavaScript. It took a lot of time to learn all this stuff. So, you were stuck in that gray area where you were just like a a generalist, but it was very difficult to be an expert in any single area because it takes so much time. But with cursor and tools like it, it has drastically opened up the ability for more people to become generalists while also really

awesome designers at the same time. And I [music] think that is the perfect combination is somebody who already has really great design sense, [music] but now can also prototype those designs and even build real functioning projects in the browser on your phone that work well. [music] And that is what tools like cursor and AI based development have opened up. Now I'm not talking about designers becoming vibe coders. I think there's a difference between vibe

coding and then AI assisted development which is what I'm talking [music] about. You need to understand the language of front end and backend in order to accurately communicate over not just one prompt trying to oneshot thing over a series of prompts which could last literally weeks to months depending on what you're building. So, that's the first really huge seismic shift trend, if you will, that I personally am going to advocate and teach here on this channel and also at design course.com,

which is getting a huge revamp. It might be up already depending on when you're watching this. I I'm completely focused on changing my direction of what I teach of which of course will be great solid UI skills but also on top of that brand identity design and AI assisted development so that you could become this full stack juggernaut of a designer here in 2026. Now the second trend that I want to talk about is the adoption of these low code no code WebGL experiences

in the browser. So here's what I'm talking about. I'm sure you've heard some of some of these tools already. One is Unicorn Studio, [music] which is like a noode uh UI for building interesting shader effects. There's also Spline 3D, which has been out for a while. They also recently launched HANA, which is kind of like their 2D/3D implementation. There is also another tool called Paper that I haven't really used very much, but I know it's out there. And then there's also Rive, of

course, which allows you to integrate really cool UI animations and interactions and prototyping and all that good stuff. So the reason I say the adoption of these tools is important is because right now there's a lot of AI slop on the UI design side of things. So yeah, you can go ahead and tell cursor to create like, you know, a specific UI in this style and that and this that and that and whatever and it comes out with a pretty decent job, but a lot of them

are kind of like cookie cutter. And if you want to be able to really differentiate yourself and separate yourself from the AI based designs, you need to integrate these tools and learn how to understand them and how to implement them. uh because the AI based generators aren't integrating with those tools specifically, not yet at least. So the one way I can really tell if something has been handcrafted and if a designer, you know, whoever produced it is really a strong designer. It's it's

really about identifying if they're using any of these type of external tools on top of what's already generated in the UI itself. So these tools are actually really fun to use as well. And each one of them serves a different purpose slightly. So learning all of them or most of them is going to be something that I'm going to try to teach on this channel and at designcourse.com here very soon. So I think those are the two big takeaways for 2026. Uh it's going to be designers now becoming

builders which is the number one biggest thing which is awesome. [music] And then number two, it's going to be the adoption of these third-party tools and integrations to help separate yourself and elevate these web experiences as well because they really unlock a lot of cool functionality and visuals. So, as always, make sure to subscribe here. 2026 is going to be a big year for this channel as I mentioned before because I'm going to start pumping out way more content than I have

lately and everything's going to be focused around those two primary things. Designers becoming builders and also the adoption of all these really cool thirdparty services. I will see you all very soon and goodbye.