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Ok, so you've created the ultimate site with 45 degree angles and tiny, tiny fonts. You've pimped out your backgrounds with shattered, pointy 3D chrome objects. You've mastered the scrolling dynamic text field and the ease out actionscript motion formula.
Now what?
Where do you think the design community is headed next? Back to the 60s? Will free-love and psychedelica be the next big thing? Or will a love of minimialism prevail? Or will we all Jakob out and go retro back to blue underlined links and animated gifs?
discuss.
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Moderator
The Minister of No Crap
I think that we'll start to see a some more of those 3-D interfaces that have started popping up such as:
http://www.teragroup.net
There a ton of possibilities with doing sites like this. I don't think that they'll dominate, but we'll definitely start seeing more of them.
-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com
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I think people are getting tired of 3-D interfaces, mainly because of the incredible missuse of them.
The future holds lots of colour. You'll see websites start to break away from the drab blacks and greys that you see plastered everywhere. I can definaterly see the psychedelics come into play here.
What I think you'll see more of is user interaction. Meaning there's going to be a shift from standard menus to something new. I see avatars and digital assistants popping up. You'll have a little web character play you through websites. That's already starting, just look around at sites like http://www.oddcast.com
Who knows, we may regress back to the hippy style for design. After all history does repeat itself and bellbottoms and flower T's have already come back into dress style.
That's just my little glimpse into the future 
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FK Robot Wrangler
the web is a diverse place now, and it always will be. there will probably always be text-only sites "a la jakob", but there will be new interface ideas too. all those wacky interfaces are fun, but sometimes i just want to log on and buy a CD. i don't need a personal avatar for that. what i'm predicting is that there will contine to be a wide spectrum of design possibilities, it will just get wider as time passes.
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Where's Sigourney Weaver?
I hope designers will get away from those tired spaceship-looking sites. Aside from the same ol' look, I can't stand that tiny little type which is way too small for any user to have to deal with. It may look sleek and cool at first glance but it isn't user-friendly and that is more important and always will be.
There's so much more that Flash could be used for but a lot of people are sadly more interested in copying others than trusting their creativity to come up with something fresh and new.
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heh.
Yeah, the "futuristic" look is getting played out.
That's a good point, jaredigital, that the diversity will only increase as more and more people get online and the oldsters start to mature...
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Basically, solid priniciples of design will never change. There will always be a new flavour of the month, or of the year, or of the decade, and many things will be produced that use this flavour to advantage, marrying it with beautiful design, but just as many (probably more) ugly things will be created merely because of the WOW factor.
Almost anyone can get someone's attention. Keeping it is where skill and talent come in. That's not to suggest that we shouldn't learn new technology as it comes along--but we must treat it as merely one more exotic colour on our palette.
Well that's my opinion, anyway.
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Modding with Class
I believe that the future development of sites will see an even stronger separation between "immersive entertainment" sites and "minimalist commercial" sites. By this I mean that there will be less of a crossover between the entertainment value of sites and the functional value.
With the advent of broadband access, the multimedia experiences will continue to develop, but we will see a drastic convergence to usability and function in the business world.
Remember... things get fat with experimentation, but thinner with function. Advanced technology is intended to make things easier and faster. Once the joy of broadband has worn off, we will be in the same position we are in now... trying to streamline our processes to reach a broader audience.
I know I'm rambling, but I want to touch on creative design quickly...
Space-age is out and traditional is in. We will see a trend of conservative, eye friendly designs as opposed to shocking, eyepopping sites. There is a massive trend looming due to the recent "dot-Bomb" massacres that says, "user experience in King." It will become increasingly important not to offend current and prospective customers.
OK... Enough babbling.
Jabez
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the only thing i know is that a lot of people are used to the left-side navigation and hate other navigations because they aren't familiar ... to bad for them ... yhe new navigation demand a sort of intuition its very strange to see people desperately looking for the navigation ... or asking where can i click if u can click on everything
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i hope to see more of the work like that that first got me into flash such as: http://www.dero357.com/
i'd also like to see more visual poetry as a whole.
my hope is that the lines between commerical art and the artist/designers own personal self expression art becomes more blurred
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somethings will disappear
I think some things will disappear for sure in the near future:
The 'Flash plugin required, click here to get it' message - much like the 'click here for text only version' or the 'JavaScript required' or the 'designed for Netscape 3' messages went away.
The 'no-warning fullscreen mode' - Even thoug many of us like to see our work in fullscreen, IE has that option in the chrome, hence it should be a user's desicion, not a designers decision. When you make that decision you take control away from the user, and users don't like that. See what happened to 'frames', I sense the same negative feedback for fullscreen.
Diversity on the corporate flash site arena - As usability, human-computer interaction, human factors and ergonomics experts discover the flash interface and it goes mainstream (sigh!) they will start to dictate what is best for a tool or task oriented interface, managers will buy their books, it will turn into a fad and then into corporate policy. The inevitable will occur, clients will no longer say, 'do something wild', they will say, do it so I can drag and drop my links into my favorite area, don't import any .jpgs into the movie, no duplication over 15 symbols, document your scripts and so on.
What else do you think will disappear from the current flash web design scene?
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Frames are definitely "out" and have been for a while (frames=yuck). I think Flash holds a key to the future of web design. Users will want more interactivity and Flash already provides much of that.
As for style, that will ALWAYS change. The "sci-fi/futuristic" look may be out, but it will come back in a couple of years or more. If you look at a lot of new web sites, especially ad magazines, you'll see a trend towards a minimalist look with soft colours (greens, purples, oranges, blues, etc.). This has much potential but the minmalistic effect can be compromised by web sites with LOTS of text. In any case, I'm using that trend much more.
Personally, I have always liked the retro 40's/50's look but, like anything else, is best used only when appropriate.
Gross: fading backgrounds, animated "e-mail me"
graphics, Javascripts that make text links
BIG and BOLD on mouse-over, Splash pages made
with DHTML, Javascript slideshows, anything with
happy faces on it.
Cool: Flash added to a web site for esthetic purposes, full- Flash sites, giving user option for full-screen mode
instead of pushing it on them, small popup windows
instead of full pages where there is little content
(creates more fluid flow).
Rule of the day: Less is more! This goes for Flash, too.
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If you asked me a few years back where web design would be today, even during the early stages of flash, I would never have predicted it would have come this far. It's almost impossible to predict where webdesign will go. At first, the "internet" was used by the military as a means of transfering data - but someone figures out how to put pictures on it and boom > advertising and porn jump in. Figure out how to make animation and games, it becomes an accepted form of entertainment. So what's next? There's really no way of knowing. Just keep up w/ technology, stay true to what you do best and love most, and always be ready to change.
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