The Future of IA/UX Design

The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed. What are the global influences driving design around the world? What’s the state of the online world today? What are the future trends?

Jan 15, 2025 - 23:53

Jan 15, 2025 - 23:52

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Global Considerations

As the internet brings people around the world closer and closer together, designers have more opportunities to create systems for a global audience. Particularly in developing regions, design priorities may be different due to a reliance on mobile devices or other factors (some areas went from no internet directly to mobile only, bypassing much of web1.0 and web2.0). While global IA covers a lot of topics, in this section we focus on the user experience strategy for organizations that interact with their users in multiple languages/cultures, different countries, or in a combination of both. People from different cultures and countries have different value systems and cognitive styles, which may lead to different expectations of user experience and usability. Companies and businesses with global services and products need to pay close attention to those factors so that they can design their user interfaces to best meet the user needs.

The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed—attributed to the author William Gibson.

1. Makeup of the World’s Internet Users

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), part of the United Nations, estimates that in 2023 there were 5.4 billion internet users, representing 67% of the global population (Table 1), an increase of 3.5% from the year before (2023a). That’s a lot of people to design for, each of whom have their own unique characteristics while also sharing similarities with a larger group.

Regions and percent of population using the internet (International Telecommunication Union, 2023a)

Region	Percent of population using the internet (2023) (%)
World	67
Africa	37
Americas	87
Arab States	69
Asia–Pacific	66
Commonwealth of independent states (CIS)	89
Europe	91

There also remains a wide range of internet use by country. The World Bank (2024) estimates that some countries such as Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates have 100% of their population online (as of 2022), while others are 10% or even lower. In general, more developed nations will have a higher percentage of their populations online. In the United States, the Pew Research Center (2024) reports 95% of people using the internet, with 80% having a broadband connection at home. Compare this to 52% online and just 1% with home broadband in 2000.

These metrics help IAs and businesses develop strategies and tactics on how to deliver information. In areas where there is high Internet penetration, you can expect to see more digital services. You may also expect that the population is more digitally savvy and expects more from the systems they interact with. User interface, design and visual design, and the whole user experience, will have to meet the expectations of this audience. We could also expect that this population is familiar with the main design patterns discussed in chapter seven.

2. Languages Used on the Internet

English is the predominate language on the internet, with estimated 49.9% of websites today (W3 Techs, 2024). No other language comes close to its use. English is so heavily represented because the internet was invented in English-speaking countries, many early adopters spoke English, the US is a global leader in tech and innovation, English is the world’s most commonly taught second language, and it is “used as a common language for international business, academia, and diplomacy” (Internet Society Foundation, 2024). Table 2 shows the top six languages used on the internet, as of June 15, 2024. Although many websites are in English, IAs and designers should still work to make sure systems are available in the necessary languages, and work towards internationalization and localization when appropriate.

Top languages on the internet (W3 Techs, 2024)

Language	Percent of websites (%)
English	49.9
Spanish	5.8
German	5.4
Japanese	4.9
French	4.3

3. Mobile Use

Designers should be aware of the predominant devices used, and in many cases mobile is the leader. More than three quarters of the world’s population own a mobile phone (Table 3), and mobile phones are the most common way people access the internet. (International Telecommunication Union, 2023b) However, we must be aware of context. It is unlikely (today) a smartphone will be used to access a complicated SaaS online office tool, in which case designers should try to offer a mobile friendly version, with the top tasks supported.

Mobile phone ownership (International Telecommunication Union, 2023b)

Region	Percent aged 10 or older with a mobile phone (%)
World	78
Africa	63
Americas	88
Arab States	82
Asia–Pacific	75
Commonwealth of independent states (CIS)	93
Europe	93

In these highly mobile societies IAs and UX designers will likely be called upon to develop mobile friendly applications, and can expect to take a mobile first approach. Additionally, when expanding to a new region, organizations should be aware of the top devices used to ensure that their applications and services meet the users where they are. For example, in many parts of the world, Android smartphones are predominant, however in the United States, Apple’s iPhone is the leader. If a US-based company wants to expand, they should be aware of this difference and plan their design and development accordingly. WeChat and WhatsApp have achieved high market penetration around the world, but similar to Android, they are not leaders in the United States. When thinking about integrating information spaces, the global IA should be aware of these distinctions.

4. The Need for Internationalization and Localization

Globalization makes it possible for companies to gain significantly bigger portions of sales outside of their domestic markets. Nike sells its products in over 100 countries, and McDonalds also operates in over 100 countries. A key to success for those multinational companies is understanding local markets, and positioning products and services. It is equally important to understand and meet the needs of employees in different regions and countries to boost collaboration and improve job productivity.

People with different cultural backgrounds think and behave differently. Examined closely, these differences go way beyond speaking and writing in different languages. Cultural differences are present in values and attitudes, social relationships, communication styles, visual preferences, and cognitive styles. All of these potentially affect the design of highly usable and satisfying user interfaces for users from different cultures. (Plocher et al., 2021, p. 162)

All of this points to a focus on internationalization and localization for websites, apps, and intranets. While internationalization (I18N) is about designing an application or website so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes, localization is the process of adapting through language, content and design to reflect local cultures. Many subtle or significant differences need to be taken into consideration in cultural preferences, language, tradition, and religion. The next section introduces how cross-cultural theories help guide the localization of website designs.

5. Cross-Culture Theories and Localization

Here, we introduce two sets of well-known cross-culture theories that can be used to guide the user experience strategies for localization. One is Hall and Hall (1989) theory about High Context (HC) versus Low Context (LC) culture, and the other is Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions framework (1984). In addition, empirical studies also show evidence that people from different cultures interpret usability differently. Even the way they organize information is different (Frandsen-Thorlacius et al., 2009; Morville, 2003; Plocher et al., 2021).

6. High Context Versus Low-Context Culture Types

Hall and Hall (1989) states that all cultures can be situated in relation to one another through the styles in which they communicate. In LC cultures, such as France, North America, Scandinavian Countries, and German-speaking countries, LC communication occurs predominantly through explicit statements in text and speech—the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code. As such, most of the information must be in the transmitted message in order to make up for what is missing in the context. High-Context cultures, including Japan, Arab Countries, Greece, Spain, Italy and England, involve implying a message through that which is not spoken; messages include other communication cues such as body language, eye movement, paraverbal cues, and the use of silence. HC communication is identified as indirect, ambiguous, maintaining harmony, reserved and understated. In contrast, LC communication is identified as direct, precise, dramatic, open, and based on feelings or true intentions.

The HC and LC theory has been applied to guide international website design. By studying the global fast food chain McDonald’s country-specific websites, Würtz (2005) found a set of differences among local websites of the same company.

Websites in HC tend to use more animated effects than those in LC;
Low-Context websites are expected to be consistent in their layout and color schemes, whereas pages in High-Context websites are expected to be diverse.
Opening of links in the same browser windows in LC websites is in contrast to the HC Asian websites where new pages would open in new browser windows, giving the visitor a multitude of starting points for further website navigation.

Hofstede’s Five Cultural Dimensions

1. Overview of the Five Dimensions

Based on his five years of intensive research with hundreds of IBM employees in 53 countries, Dutch cultural anthropologist Geert Hofstede (1984) identified five cultural dimensions. He rated all the 53 countries on indices for each dimension, normalized to values (usually) of 0 to 100. The five dimensions of culture are the following:

Power-distance: The extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.
Collectivism vs. individualism: Individualism pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose; everyone is expected to look after themselves and immediate family. Collectivism pertains to societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.
Femininity vs. masculinity: Masculinity pertains to societies in which social gender roles are clearly distinct; femininity pertains to societies in which social gender roles overlap.
Uncertainty avoidance (UA): The extent to which people feel anxiety about uncertain or unknown matters. Cultures with high UA tend to have more formal rules, and focus on tactical operations rather than strategy. People seem active, emotional, and even aggressive. By contrast, low UA cultures tend to be more informal and focus more on long-range strategic matters than day-to-day operations. These cultures tend to be less expressive and less openly anxious; people behave quietly without showing aggression or strong emotions; people seem easy-going and relaxed.
Long vs. short-term orientation: Long-term orientation is also called “Confucian dynamism.” Persistence (perseverance), ordering relationships by status and observing this order, thrift and having a ‘sense of shame’ are the dominant values. The values of perseverance and thrift are future oriented and more dynamic while the short-term values are more static, being past and present oriented.

2. Implications of Cultural Dimensions on Design

Chessum et al. (2023) in a study of search user interfaces report the potential for Hofstede’s dimensions to inform and enhance the user experience and recommend additional research in this space. When using cultural dimensions as a framework to analyze websites, researchers (Frandsen-Thorlacius et al., 2009; Marcus & Gould, 2000) reported the following distinctive user experience focuses from different cultures. LC cultures tend to have low scores in Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance, and more Collectivism oriented; and vice versa. Both LC/HC theory and Uncertainty Avoidance dimension can well explain why Europeans expect compact webpages with a few precise links, while many Asian consumers on high-bandwidth networks expect results as screens full of colorful content.

3. Guidelines for Global IA and UX Design

There are two common ways to localize information systems:

A surface-level translation of language and jargon to reflect the conventions of the target audience.
A deeper aesthetic change, altering images, colors, logic, functionality and branding to conform to the target audience on a cultural level (Sun, 2001).

Below are some specific guidelines for globalization:

Pay Attention to Language Details: Translation is by no means straightforward. Sometimes, there is no direct mapping between languages and people in different cultures interpret words/meanings differently. For example, the word ‘flat’ in Nebraska is not the same as a ‘flat’ in London.
Text Swell: The difference between the width of text between various languages. Typically, German translations require 30% to 40% more space than English. Sometimes, while some English labels or phrases can fit in one line, in German it would require text wrapping. Be aware of left-to-right and right-to-left translations.
The Combination of Languages and Countries: Most countries speak multiple languages and some languages are spoken in multiple countries. Do not assume that there is one to one mapping between each country/region and the official language of the country.
Language options need to be obvious and easy to find. Otherwise, most people would assume there are no such options. List choices in the target language, not English.
Avoid Using Non-Universal Symbols and Iconographies: Be sensitive to the customs and practices of other cultures. For example, the ‘okay’ sign (index finger and thumb together forming a circle) is considered obscene in Brazil, while the thumbs-up gesture in Iran is highly offensive.
Colors Have Cultural Significance: It is imperative that you do your homework before you choose colors for your international website (Iler, 2007). For example, black in Western culture is the color of mourning; not so in Asia, where white signifies death.
Understanding Cultural Subtlety: In Chinese culture, almost all names have some meaning, especially for company names or trademarks. Company names are often considered as the equivalent of their brands.
Beware of Users’ Environmental Situations: For example, multiple family members may share one account in collectivism cultures (e.g., in Vietnam). People may sit side by side to browse the Web together. Under these circumstances, system features like shared accounts and co-browsing should be taken into consideration.
Supporting Global eCommerce: Ensure that the preferred payment and delivery methods are provided for users.
Platform: Understand the primary platforms in each country or region. For example, much of the world uses WhatsApp, while it has not caught on as heavily in the United States.

Global design is growing in importance as more people around the world are connected. Western/English speaking is the predominant paradigm for many today, but IAs should be aware that their work can reach a worldwide audience. Designing for a global product is challenging, however with new web-based technologies, user research and design efforts can be coordinated around the globe from a central location, connecting IAs with a new global audience.

The Future of IA and UX

Let’s take one more look at IA and UX design itself, with a particular curiosity of its future in mind. What are the trends in IA? What are the relationships between UX design and research? Let’s discuss these questions and look to the future of information architecture.

1. Key Challenges

The information technology environment has constantly changed over the last two decades. While IA and UX design grew rapidly from a need to create more usable websites, the field now includes all manner of devices and products. This expansion of the roles brings new opportunities as well as new responsibilities and challenges that come with the opportunities. In the following, we briefly discuss some of the new challenges.

2. UX Community

Before we get to the challenges, let’s take a look at some of the resources we have to help meet them. UX has a strong community that includes professionals in IA, human factors, visual design, and many more. Information and learning resources are freely shared on blogs and websites, and in-person or remote meetups. Below are some resources we’ve found helpful.

MeasuringU: measuringu

A extremely valuable resource for learning the quantitative side of IA and UX, provides many excellent insights into standardized questionnaires and usability measures, like SUS and UMUX-Lite. We’ve cited research from Sauro and Lewis, leaders at this organization, several times.

UX Tigers—Jakob Nielsen’s New UX Articles uxtigers and NN/g—Nielsen Norman Group: nngroup

This is an absolute thought leader in the field of HCI, usability, user experience design, and information architecture. We’ve cited this source throughout our book.

ACM—The Association for Computing Machinery: acm

The ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society and supports research in our field. The special interest group SIGCHI has local chapters around the world, chapters; and the ACM digital library is an invaluable resource for academic research, acm.

Interaction Design Foundation: interaction-design

A large collection of UX design resources, with articles by top names in the field.

IxDA: The Interaction Design Association: ixda

IxDA supports professionals in the Interaction Design community, with a goal of advancing the human condition through better design.

Laws of UX: lawsofux

An engaging resource with concise descriptions of many laws and principles in our field.

UX Magazine: uxmag

An online resource and community with articles and resources for UX professionals.

World IA Day: worldiaday

World Information Architecture Association (WIAA) hosts World IA Day, the one-day annual celebration held in dozens of locations across the globe.

These resources and many more help the new and experience IA alike learn and keep their skills up to date. There are also countless UX books and conferences to help you on your journey. We’re fortunate to be part of a UX community where so many freely share their knowledge to help others.

While visual design and interaction design have long been a part of human computer interaction departments, more recently universities have started offering degrees in the User Experience field. A search for user experience degrees returns hundreds of options. Drexel University (n.d.) for instance, offers a Master’s in Human–Computer Interaction & User Experience that “prepares students to create technologies that support and complement human needs and abilities in contexts such as work, wellness, home, entertainment and artistic expression.”

In addition to university courses, many additional firms like IDEO and Google offer certificates in user experience and related disciplines. Design thinking, in particular, has become a very popular executive education, topic, and systems thinking is similarly taught in business programs. These certificate programs recognize that many graduates have a diverse set of skills and overtime may see the need to focus on a particular area to solve business problems. Through the combination of the community, university, courses, and certificate programs IAs and UX designers are well equipped to face the challenges we discuss next.

3. Findability and Cross-Channel/Ubiquitous Access

Findability has long been established as an essential task for IA (Morville, 2005), and remains a challenge. As people move to a multi-device experience and use Generative AI (GenAI) powered agents (like search or chatbots), information needs to be useful in multiple contexts. Content created in one context may be needed in another. Content may be used and combined to create new content through large language models and GenAI. As we discussed in chapter one: Accessing, consuming, and creating information is increasingly decoupled from devices or single resources, and more personalized for the individual user. The forward-looking designer will learn about these technologies and how to leverage them for new and innovative user experiences.

With evolving technology and emerging markets around the globe, providing ubiquitous access to information is a major challenge. Devices are different, languages change, necessitating translations, devices are different, and GenAI needs to account for cultural differences. On a practical level, this can mean the requirement to have design teams or experts in different regions of the world. As discussed in Chap. 8 distributing teams can lead to challenges with design, consistency, and communication.

4. Content Representation

Content representation traditionally focuses on designing content organization systems based on semantic relationships of terms and concepts. Social networks, linked data from different sources, and content semantics are often intertwined to challenge the design skills of information architects. Many unsolved problems related to content representation, such as automatic metadata generation, controlled vocabularies and user’s tagging integration, and using semantic networks for access and navigation, are very difficult challenges both for research and for implementations.

Despite these challenges people’s desire for more and more content is almost insatiable. Improvements in metadata and cloud technology, and others, help us organize and deliver content to meet this growing need.

5. Digital Preservation

What happens to all this new information being created and stored (and can be deleted without a trace)? How can we track changes to dynamic websites (assuming we should) and AI generated content? How can users maintain different versions of documents on their device and cloud? Should information architects be responsible for these challenges? The answer is it depends on the preservation need, but IAs should certainly have an influence on any preservation effort.

As information comes and goes, people may not have access to the digital content previously available. And, as more companies rely on the digital space for their business, preserving content and data over a longer period of time has become important. Some businesses even have what are called “data warehouses” that store all sorts of data and content. Digital preservation techniques are needed to maintain access, and in some cases to comply with legal or other regulations. IAs can support preservation through metadata and design.

6. Voice and Gesture

Voice interfaces like Apple’s SIRI and Amazon Alexa have become mainstream. The always on microphone can pick up commands; by simply by saying “Hey Alexa” a user can begin interaction through a connected device. While this is still considered a specialized topic area, many of the core UX concepts and principles apply here.

Gesture input is characterized usually by a touch screen, where swipes and multi-finger actions perform different tasks. IAs must be aware of limitations like the lack of interactions like “onHover” in a touch environment. Devices with eye tracking or hand/body tracking are offering more and more features that use movement for commands. As these technologies develop we can expect to see them leveraged in new and innovative ways.

Virtual reality (VR) is one way in which we see Voice and gesture come together in a very advanced way. In VR the user typically wears a headset and uses hand controllers or just their hands to move and manipulate their environment. Well, somewhat mature this field seems to still have a long way to go and a bright future. It’s frequently used for gaming and training opportunities, even for things like flight simulators. As the user moves their heads and hands the system adapts the view and perspective. This is a substantially different experience than the typical smart phone or desktop computer.

7. Inclusive Design

Inclusive design is a growing area of focus for IAs, UX designers and businesses in general. Following the human-centered mindset, it requires that designers ensure people are not excluded from their digital products, with the mindset that access to the web, mobile apps, and other digital products is an essential human right. In practice, inclusive design can sometimes mean longer development cycles tech along with practical and technical challenges. This increases the need for IAs to get buying and partnership from business stakeholders.

Despite these challenges, inclusive design offers many benefits. An often cited example is curb cuts for wheelchair users to cross intersections. While initially designed for accessibility, these curb cuts are also useful for people pushing strollers, bicyclists, and others. In a digital space features like auto complete, voice control, and high contrast display settings are available to increase inclusivity for certain populations and are widely used features across all users. This shows how inclusive design can have unexpected benefits for all.

Sometimes, it’s just good business. Many regions have laws around accessibility and inclusivity, good design will minimize your legal risks. And, over 1 billion people around the world are estimated to have some sort of disability. Inclusive design is more than just accessibility, but these examples show the broad inpact of inclusive design concepts. Inclusive design can increase your audience, enhance your brand reputation, and help make your designs more flexible for your users.

8. Customer Experience and Business Goals

Customer experience is a field that follows a customer (user) across all the “touchpoints” in relation to an organization. Touchpoints can include things like websites, in-person/in-store, and calling a customer care line. An important concept is that of the “customer journey,” which shows interactions along with motivations, emotions, and outcomes. Oftentimes customer journeys are the same or very similar to user journeys that we covered in chapter four. Customer journeys typically include awareness of the brand or company, experiences with advertising or marketing and the resulting expectations.

With the rising importance of digital systems and people’s higher and higher usability expectations, IAs and UX designers have increasing responsibilities to manage the customer journey and account for online and offline touchpoints as part of the overall user experience.

Along with this comes expectations that UX improves business outcomes. It is no longer enough that designers make things look aesthetically pleasing or make customers happy. Today, businesses demand that UX designs contribute to measurable outcomes. Well, this additional responsibility may seem daunting to some designers. In fact, we see it as a very good development. By focusing on business outcomes, UX teams can get a seat at the table for strategy and funding helping to grow the field. Good IAs and UX designers today understand the business, implications of their work and form strong relationships with business stakeholders.

9. Integrating Systems and Spaces

Integrating systems as the world becomes more and more complex remains a challenge. Advances in cloud, computing and networking provide IA the opportunity to bring together resources in new and exciting ways. However, we must also be aware of the context of use to make sure that these information channels are useful and don’t just contribute to information overload. This will require substantial collaboration, design thinking and systems thinking.

While well equipped with the methods, principles, and human-centered mindset, UX teams need to work with other stakeholders to address issues in large systems. While often focused on a single interface or digital product, the ever more connected world means that IAs and designer must focus more and more on systems thinking, while maintaining a grounding in human-centered design and design thinking.

Design thinking has long been a part of the user experienced domain. It has been a common place where the boundaries between business and design are blurred. Many UX designers take on the responsibility of managing design, thinking projects in their organization because they have the skills, like user research, that are needed to complete the project successfully.

Systems thinking, while having a longer history in the business world, is a relative newcomer to the user experience community. Several new publications, such as articles and books have been published recently, that link the core skills to systems thinking and systems mapping and systems mapping. It’s a very sensible evolution. IA has long been focused on integrating information spaces and systems, and the design skills to draw maps that increase stakeholders understanding fits squarely in the UX designers tool kit.

10. Human Centered AI

If you’ve been paying attention to the past nine chapters, you’ve seen that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a major component of IA and UX design. The IA community is rising to the occasion—The 2024 IA conference has the theme “IA in the Age of AI: Designing Intelligent Information Landscapes,” and the Dublin Core 2024 conference, “Trust, Transformation, and Humanity” is centered on the intersection of AI and metadata. UX and human–computer interaction publications have literally thousands of papers and presentations on human-centered AI (HCAI) and explainable AI (XAI). Leaders in the UX field from both industry and academia have turned their considerable skills towards making sure UX has a role in development of powerful new AI applications. Generative AI promises unlimited possibilities to provide highly personalized, adaptive and accessible user experiences and also makes the design processes significantly more efficient. Universities like Stanford and UC Berkeley have started human-centered AI departments, with governments around the world are involved as well. And, top tech companies have entire teams focused on HCAI. While many more challenges are sure to arise, there is a large contingent of researchers and practitioners working to ensure AI works for humans.

11. Higher Stakes

The rapid rise of generative AI applications and spread of AI presents new challenges for designers. Many AI systems we see today are low-stakes—if a movie recommendation is wrong nobody is harmed. However, AI is moving into situations with higher stakes, where the consequences are severe:

How do we design and develop AI systems that have the potential to dictate whether or not someone receives a mortgage for a home purchase, or where to send first responders during a rapidly spreading wildfire?. (Barmer et al., 2021, p. 3)

These new questions, and higher stakes, will demand increasing attention in the coming years. The academic and industry communities are focused on ensuring a human-centered future, putting the human user first, with UX design as an emphasis (Shneiderman, 2020). Designers should look to partner with data scientists, machine learning engineers, and others in the AI field, bringing the much-needed human-centered approaches to ensure AI works for all.

Ozmen Garibay et al. (2023a, 2023b) gives us Six Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Grand Challenges, including Human-AI interaction and a Design and Evaluation Framework “as a call for action to conduct research and development in AI that accelerates the movement towards more fair, equitable and sustainable societies” (p. 394). Using these and the other frameworks and guidelines we’ve shared in earlier chapters gives user experience professionals a roadmap for effective collaborations to address GAI challenges, such as minimizing potential biases in AI models, increasing explainability and transparency, and protecting user privacy. Also there’s a delicate balance to strike between leveraging GAI’s capabilities and maintaining user control and trust (Persona, 2024). Clearly, IAs, UX designers, and everyone on user experience teams will be important parts of researching, designing, and integrating information spaces in the current Generative Generation.

IA, UX Design and Beyond

We expect IA and UX design to continue well into the future. Before we end this journey in the land of information architecture and UX, let us revisit our description of information architecture given in Chap.:

Information architecture is about organizing and simplifying information for its intended users; designing, integrating and aggregating information spaces to create usable systems or interfaces; creating ways for people to find, understand, exchange and manage information; and, therefore, stay on top of information and make right decisions.

We hope that it becomes clearer now that the point we emphasize throughout the book is that IA and UX design is not just about UI design or backend metadata and content. Rather, it is about helping people make use of information and make information systems and spaces work for them. Given the power and importance of emerging AI technologies, and the increasing reliance on digital and connected services and products, the human-centered approach seems to be more critical ever. The ultimate goal is to integrate information spaces into places where users can have productive and fulfilling experiences, and where technology and information is fully utilized to support people’s goals and extend their abilities.