The past decade saw a public realization that user experience was important, and businesses focused on building easy to use software and web products. Usability was the rage for a while. Now, it’s simply a given. Usability is the baseline you start before really considering who’s using your stuff and what your UX Goals are.

Now we live in a modern era of UX, and visual design and delight has taken center stage. It started with Windows 8’s Metro Modern UI, with it’s bright pops of colors and fun animation. Apple took note and scrapped it’s skeuomorphic UI in favor of vivid pastels and line art minimalism. Android was soon to follow with delightful animated transitions and equally bright colors in it’s Material UI.

Today’s age of UX has a big focus on visual design, using the UI to make people happy and have some fun. “Design that delights” is the phrase tossed around that software companies are looking for. It even has it’s own conference!

But the future holds much more promise. Since people started thinking about what UX can actually do to be helpful, bigger ideas have been emerging. The future of UX will be Love… love our devices and software show for us by anticipating our every need, the way my wife demonstrates her love of me by thinking, “What would Tevi want?” Our devices and software will anticipate what we will do next, and jump to accommodate. And then our codependency on those products, as companies lock us in, will make us completely unable to function without our beloved devices.

The future of UX will be extremely sophisticated, utilizing big data, constantly analyzing the data for evolving scenarios, and incorporating cooperating systems and services to anticipate our needs.

Everybody knows Google is working on self-driving cars. This won’t just be a way for you to browse facebook or text while you’re being driven to work. Self-driving cars will become smart devices which will be able to ferry our kids to school, and then see when our meeting is over from Google Calendar to be able to pick us up in time. We won’t need to ask for it. We’ll forget how to ask for it. We’ll forget how to drive. It’ll know our precise location from our phone’s GPS.  We’ll just be done with our meeting, and there’s our car, warmed up, waiting at the curb. Now imagine a much bigger, city-sized network, utilizing a public fleet of cars which does the same thing, with more complicated logistics to get cars traveling the shortest distances, using the least amount of gas. Maybe you can subscribe to that car sharing platform for just $99/month. Is that going to be Uber of the future?

Think of Amazon’s warehousing and logistics network. The not-so-distant future Amazon will probably be able to ship you groceries and sundries so you have it the day before you run out. You’ll become so dependent on never having to create a shopping list and your much-needed items simply appearing on your doorstep, you’ll be completely unable to function without it! Especially if it puts regular grocery stores out of business, and Amazon’s We’ll Send Your Stuff Before You Realize You Need It service will be the only grocery store around…

The future of UX is bright. Designers will think of ways to anticipate user needs, and we’ll have the tools and technology at our disposal to actually build such incredible products. And ultimately, those products will be the ones which win the future.