2021 Design Wishlist from a User’s Perspective

What the general public wants to see in 2021

Around this time of year, plenty of articles start to circulate about “Design Trends” for 20XX. Although these articles are nice to browse through, they serve more as inspiration (like Dribbble) rather than a checklist or guide.

I wanted to take a different approach to this. I came up with 4 design “improvements” that (as a user) I would like to see more of in 2021. (I use the word “improvement” because I can only hope they are not temporary fads.)

Proposed Improvement #1: More cursor types

There are so many cursor types out there, it’s a shame we do not use more of them. Yes, they are not always visually appealing, but sometimes they are the only affordance users get — especially if you take color out of the equation.

Medium has a great example of using the not-allowed cursor (along with a tooltip) to signify that I cannot clap for my own story. Sure, the icon is a little greyed out, but as a user I would never be able to identify this icon as disabled with 100% certainty until I see the cursor change.

It should also be known that WCAG guidelines state that color alone should not determine what is e.g. clickable and what is not, so as…